Claus Bertermann - Stillness

Artist: Claus Bertermann

OFFICIAL WEBSITE: www.bertermann.art

Claus Bertermann is an internationally established contemporary artist whose market profile is backed by international market authority and exceptional secondary market results. Known for his powerful, large-format abstract works, Bertermann has consistently commanded high-tier prices at the world’s most prestigious auction houses. His top realized prices include €18,900 at C. h. r. i. s. t. i. e´s Paris (Retro Zen), €15,240 at S. o. t. h. e. b. y´s Cologne (F5TP#CB), and €15,120 at C. h. r. i. s. t. i. e´s Paris (Whispershade). With additional successful sales at V. a. n. H. a. m, A. r. t. c. u. r. i. a. l, T. a. j. a. n, and D. o. r. o. t. h. e. u. m, Bertermann’s work is a proven asset for serious collectors worldwide.

The New Expressionist Series Continues

With a Master’s degree in Architecture (TU Munich), Bertermann originally gained global recognition for his "architectural strata" technique—layering and scraping oil paint to build spatial depth. In 2026 he opened a radically new chapter: figurative scenes painted wet-in-wet with large brushes, guided by the painters of German Expressionism—distorted perspectives and heightened, emotionally charged colour. "Stillness" belongs to that series and takes on one of the most heavily used postures in European painting: a woman lying down.

International Artistic Footprint

With more than 1,000 large format works in private and institutional collections across the globe—including a monumental triptych at his alma mater, the Technical University of Munich—Bertermann continues to bridge the gap between rigorous structure and intuitive freedom. This Catawiki offering presents a rare opportunity to acquire a key work from an exciting new series by an artist with a solidified international auction record.

Key details for collectors

– Title: Stillness
– Year: 2026
– Dimensions (H x W): 130 x 200 cm (51 × 79 inches)
– Medium: Acrylic and oil stick on canvas
– Signed by the artist on the front and back side
– Original, one-of-a-kind artwork - MADE BY A REAL PERSON, NOT AI.
– Ships rolled without frame

What makes this piece unique

European painting has a five-hundred-year habit of laying women down on furniture. Titian did it, Goya did it, Manet did it, Matisse did it for decades. Almost all of those women are performing rest for somebody standing outside the frame.

The woman in "Stillness" is not performing anything. She has lain down on a chaise longue in a room that is obviously hers, and she is not getting up.

The twist is in the title, and it takes a moment to catch. Everything in this painting is loud. The chaise burns vermilion. A field of raw yellow blazes in from the right edge. Black oil stick crackles across the whole lower third like static. Orange, green and crimson collide behind her without a single quiet passage between them. The one calm thing in all that noise is the woman herself. The picture is not still—she is. The title names the exception, not the rule.

And she is awake. Her eyes are open, level, and aimed straight out of the canvas at whoever came in. Then look at her hand: laid flat on the green across her legs, drawn in one continuous white line—the single precise mark in a painting that is otherwise all weather. Nobody asleep places a hand like that.

This is not a woman being looked at. It is a woman who has decided the day is over, and who was the one entitled to decide it.

Why it is worth the price

This is a large-scale, museum-sized painting (130 x 200 cm) in landscape format from Bertermann's 2026 expressionist series. For collectors, works from the opening year of a new series carry a meaningful provenance marker, and within this series "Stillness" is the reclining figure—the one canvas that engages directly with the most loaded posture in Western art history and reverses its terms.

It is also the most compositionally ambitious work of the group. A reclining figure across a 180 cm canvas has to carry the eye the full width without a vertical to lean on; here the body itself does the work, running from the blue hair at the left edge to the cushions at the right, with the green mass of the skirt as the anchor at the centre.

Technically the canvas joins the two languages of Bertermann's figurative practice in a single field. The chaise, the wall, the green skirt and the yellow light are painted wet-in-wet with large brushes, colours bleeding into each other while the paint is still live. Over that fluid ground the oil stick does the drawing: the blue-violet contour of the face and eyes, the white line of the hand, the green outlines around the cushions, the black scribbled lattice along the base of the chaise, the yellow signature at the lower right. Freedom below, precision above—an architect's instinct for structure carrying an expressionist's appetite for colour.

Visual description & condition

The composition shows a woman reclining across a vermilion and orange chaise longue, her head at the left of the canvas and her body running to the right. Her face is painted pale lemon yellow and drawn in blue-violet oil stick: almond eyes with dark pupils, a fine drawn nose and a small red-violet mouth. Her hair is a mass of cobalt and grey-blue strokes falling behind and beneath her head, and one arm is bent up so that the chin rests near the hand.

Her upper body is laid in yellow, orange and blue-grey; across her legs lies a large mass of green, painted in broad concentric strokes of sap, olive and pale yellow-green. One hand rests flat on that green, described in a single white oil-stick line. At the right end of the chaise are cushions in pale pink, white and coral with green oil-stick contours; behind the figure a red-brown backrest or wall shape rises, crossed above by orange and green strokes and edged at the right by a burning field of cadmium yellow. The left and upper left of the canvas remain largely white and pale pink with red drips running down.

Along the lower edge, heavy black oil-stick scribbles cross the red base of the chaise in a loose lattice, with green and blue passages showing through. Colours visibly run and merge throughout; perspective and anatomy are intentionally distorted to prioritise emotional weight over realism. The work is signed in yellow at the lower right.

The work is unframed and not stretched. Condition is excellent. All surface irregularities are intentional and integral to the artist's process.

Background / artistic context

Claus Bertermann works within contemporary expressive figurative painting, focusing on states of being rather than mere representation. With his 2026 series he placed the human figure inside charged colour situations, drawing directly on the legacy of German Expressionism: bent perspective, heightened colour, and a surface kept deliberately fluid.

The Expressionists inherited the reclining figure from the salon tradition and dragged it into the studio, replacing the classical couch with their own worn sofas and blankets. The furniture changed; the arrangement mostly did not. The room still belonged to the painter and the woman was still a guest in it.

"Stillness" reverses that occupancy. The chaise, the cushions, the loud red room and the hour of the day are hers, and the painting arrives as the visitor. It keeps the format, the posture and the full expressionist colour apparatus—and quietly hands the authority in the picture to the person lying down.

Practical details for buyers:

Original, one-of-a-kind artwork
Acrylic and oil stick on canvas
Dimensions (H x W): 130 x 200 cm (51 × 79 inches)
Signed by the artist on the front and back side
Certificate of authenticity included
Shipped rolled (not framed or stretched)
Professional packaging and worldwide shipping with premium shipping companies like UPS.

The canvas includes an additional continuous white border of approximately 10 cm (approx. 4 inches) on all sides beyond the painted surface. This margin allows the artwork to be professionally restretched on museum-quality stretcher bars up to 6 cm (approx. 2.4 inches) in depth, resulting in a clean, frameless, gallery-style presentation without the need for a decorative frame.

Please note that the artwork is sold unframed and without stretcher bars. Professional stretching is the responsibility of the buyer. The painting is shipped rolled for safe international transport and flexible installation according to the buyer's preference.

The artwork is signed on both front and reverse, with title, year, and the artist's full name inscribed on the back.

Please note regarding the room views:

Some of the photographs show the painting digitally placed in an interior. These room views are AI-visualisations, created to give an impression of scale and presence only — they are not photographs of the actual work hanging in a room. Both the size proportions and the colours shown in them may differ from the original. The binding references are the dimensions stated above (H x W) and the studio photograph of the painting itself. Please also note that colours may appear differently depending on screen calibration.