Five Friends. John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly
April 10 – August 17, 2025
Museum Brandhorst, Munich

from the press release

Museum Brandhorst is pleased to announce an extensive group exhibition with artworks by John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, five artist friends who created unique connections between the artistic genres and media.
The exhibition opened on April 10, 2025, across ground floor and lower level of Museum Brandhorst, curated by Achim Hochdörfer, Yilmaz Dziewior with Arthur Fink and Anna Huber, in collaboration with Museum Ludwig, Cologne.
The group show is accompanied by the “Five Friends Festival” with dance performances, concerts and a reading in Cy Twombly’s Rose Room and – to mark the opening of the Kunstarealfest – the “Museum Brandhorst’s Young Night” on June 27th, 2025 with open-air concerts, sound installations, workshops, food trucks and drinks stands in the area between museum and Pinakothek der Moderne.
The exhibition presents 180 works of art as well as scores, stage props, costumes, photographs and archival material, it’s an insight into the interaction between the five artists friends who decisively shaped the art of the 20th century: the musician and theorist John Cage (1912 – 1992), the choreographer and dancer Merce Cunningham (1919 – 2009) and the painters and sculptors Jasper Johns, (*1930), Robert Rauschenberg (1925 – 2008) and Cy Twombly (1928 – 2011).
Their similar interests formed the basis for this connection. All five artists were in search of new forms of expression and were concerned with similar themes: with silence and chance, with technology and progress, with tradition and radical innovation.
In the 1940s and 1950s, the five friends got to know each other in various constellations and formed a creative and intimate network in which theme, ideas and inspirations circulated. This is where the exhibition begins: at the legendary Black Mountain College, Cage and Cunningham developed their concept of stillness and chance in direct exchange with the younger artists Rauschenberg and Twombly; after an extended trip to Italy and North Africa, the two younger artists developed their “signature style”: Rauschenberg his Combines – a mixture of paintings and sculpture into which he also integrated drawings and photographs – and Twombly his allusive strokes reminiscent of graffiti. Jasper Johns joined the circle of artists in 1954 and created his own pictorial concept with his flags and targets.
The exhibition spans three decades – a period in which the interweaving of art, friendship, competition and affection became a decisive impulse in the work of the five artists. Many of the works – especially in the 1050s were created side by side and in direct interaction. In this exhibition, they can be experienced for the first time in their original production context: iconic key works as well as works that have rarely or never been shown before.
The exhibition is accompanied by an extensive catalogue that examines the diverse exchange of ideas between the five friends. In their contributions, Ilka Becker, Daniel Callahan, Yilmaz Dziewior, Achim Hochdörfer, Helen Hsu, Alex Kitnick, Nick Mauss, Carrie Jaurès Noland, Kenneth E. Silver, Deborah Solomon and Trajal Harrel question and expand the hitherto mostly monographic view of the five artists.

For further information:
Museum Brandhorst, Munich
museum-brandhorst.de