Claus Bertermann - Sidekick

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.

Nobody Told the Dog He Was the Sidekick

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 his figurative work he reverses that discipline: broad fields of acrylic are laid down fast and loose, and the figures are then drawn straight over the bright, still-wet ground in oil stick—built forward, not scraped back. "Sidekick" turns that method on two characters and one very simple question: which of them is which.

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 offering presents a rare opportunity to acquire a museum-scale figurative statement from an artist with a solidified international auction record.

Key details for collectors

– Title: Sidekick
– Year: 2026
– Dimensions (H x W): 160 x 160 cm (63 x 63 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

A man sits on a skateboard. He is not riding it. He is sitting on it, knees wide, arms hanging, taking up the entire canvas in a red shirt the colour of a stop sign. Next to him, held by a thin yellow line, is his dog.

Watch where they are looking, because that is the whole painting.

The dog is looking up. Straight up, at the man, with the total attention that dogs give and humans almost never earn. The man is looking out — past the dog, past the board, past you. He has the expression of someone waiting to be photographed for something he has not yet done.

So: who is the sidekick here?

By title, obviously the dog. That is the arrangement. The human is the protagonist, the animal is the loyal companion, this is how the story has been told since the first hunter shared the first fire. But every hero needs a sidekick for one unflattering reason — alone, the hero would be unbearable. And the dog has not agreed to anything. Nobody sat him down and explained the casting. He simply decided that this man is worth looking at, and has been doing it ever since, without conditions.

Meanwhile the man is on a skateboard he is not using. In skateboarding, the kick is the push — the moment your foot leaves the ground and something actually happens. In this painting nothing is kicked. The two orange wheels sit dead still at the bottom edge. The only kick in the picture is the side one: the creature at the edge of the frame who never asked to be at the edge of anything.

Bertermann leaves the joke open. The dog has a hero. The man has an audience. One of those is a relationship.

Why it is worth the price

This is a large-scale, museum-sized painting — 160 x 160 cm, a full square — carried by a subject that is instantly legible and quietly barbed: loyalty, and how casually it gets ranked. Anyone who has ever been looked at like that by an animal will get it in three seconds. The second reading, about who is really performing and for whom, takes a little longer and does not let go.

Bertermann couples the speed of the handling — fast acrylic fields, decisive oil-stick line — with a trained architect's instinct for structure, so that a seated body, a board, two wheels and a dog never lose their weight or their place in space. The colour is the most aggressive he has used: chrome yellow ground, a red figure, acid green, violet contour. Across a room it reads as pure energy. Up close it is a portrait of two very different kinds of attention. For collectors it offers the best of Bertermann — expressive force disciplined by composition, on a subject with genuine warmth and no sentimentality.

Visual description & condition

The composition is a square, near-frontal scene filling the entire canvas. A seated male figure dominates the centre: black hair, a face built from yellow, green and orange with a dark red oil-stick line drawn around the eyes like spectacles, violet-blue eyes, and a turquoise-and-green mouth. He wears a brilliant red shirt whose folds are brushed in darker red and black; his arms and splayed fingers are drawn over the paint in violet oil stick, with white and pink strokes for the hands. His legs are worked in black and white, the right one striped in blue, black and white, and both feet end in dark sneakers outlined in thick green oil stick.

At the lower left sits the dog — black and white, with a broad white muzzle, a black nose patch and a yellow blaze at the cheek — his head tilted up toward the man. A yellow oil-stick line and a green one loop around his head and away across the canvas as lead and collar. Two orange discs rest at the lower edge, the wheels of the board beneath them. The ground is chrome yellow, interrupted by a sweep of green at the upper left and blocks of black at the upper right. Colour is pushed past description into pure sensation: chrome yellow, flame red, acid green, violet and black. The work is signed "Bertermann" in green oil stick at the lower right, beside one of the orange wheels.

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, focused on states of being rather than mere representation. "Sidekick" takes an everyday pairing — a man, his dog, a board at rest — and uses the direction of two gazes to do the work a whole narrative would otherwise need. Nothing is happening in the picture, and everything about the relationship is already decided.

Technically the work belongs to the strand of his figurative practice built on separation: a fast, painterly acrylic ground overlaid with independent oil-stick drawing, the image constructed forward rather than layered and scraped like his abstracts. Perspective and anatomy are pushed past realism to give both figures their weight — the man made heavy and monumental, the dog small and entirely present — in the highest-key colour Bertermann has yet allowed himself.

Practical details for buyers:

Original, one-of-a-kind artwork
Acrylic and oil stick on canvas
Dimensions (H x W): 160 x 160 cm (63 x 63 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.