Claus Bertermann - La Sentinelle

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. "La Sentinelle" carries this young series into portraiture for the first time, and it brings back a signature instrument from his earlier figurative work: the oil stick, whose drawn golden lines now render the sitter’s jewellery directly on top of the wet-painted acrylic field.

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 the first portrait of an exciting new series from an artist with a solidified international auction record.

Key details for collectors

– Title: La Sentinelle
– Year: 2026
– Dimensions (H x W): 210 x 160 cm (83 × 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

"La Sentinelle"—the sentinel—is a portrait built on a beautiful contradiction. A woman sits before a sweeping landscape: green terraces, a blue mountain range, a tree in full blossom. She is richly adorned—golden ornament earrings, lace gloves drawn in gold across her folded hands—and she carries the calm, unhurried authority of someone who answers to no one. Everything about the arrangement says: this is the guardian of the land behind her.

But look again at the logic of guarding. A sentinel never faces the treasure; she faces the direction the danger comes from. The orchard, the hills, the mountains—everything worth protecting lies at her back. Her eyes are fixed on the one thing the painting cannot show: the space in front of the canvas. The surprise of "La Sentinelle" is that it quietly reverses the roles. We came to look at her—and discover that we are the ones being watched. Whoever approaches the landscape must first pass her gaze, and she has clearly been sitting there long before we arrived.

The second glance rewards patience. Her face is split into two colours—one half pale daylight, the other deep turquoise shadow—because a sentinel’s watch does not end at sundown; she holds both shifts at once. Her hands, gloved in drawn gold lace, rest folded and empty: she carries no weapon at all. Her authority is the weapon. And what exactly she is guarding—the valley, a memory, a border only she can see—the painting refuses to say. That withheld secret is the engine of the picture: it keeps the viewer standing in front of her, pleading a case that has already been judged.

Why it is worth the price

This is a large-scale, museum-sized painting (210 x 160 cm) and the first portrait of the new expressionist series in Bertermann’s practice—the moment a freshly opened body of work widens its territory from landscape and street scene to the human face. For collectors, that is a meaningful provenance marker: this canvas defines how the series will speak whenever it speaks about people.

Technically, the work fuses the two languages of Bertermann’s figurative career. The entire field—landscape, costume, the two-toned face—is painted wet-in-wet with large brushes, colours bleeding and merging while the paint is still live. On top of this fluid ground, the oil stick returns from his earlier work in a single, precise role: the drawn gold of earrings and lace gloves, glinting like real jewellery against the merged colour. Freedom below, precision above—an architect’s instinct for structure carrying an expressionist’s appetite for colour.

"La Sentinelle" pairs this painterly force with a psychologically charged subject—the guardian whose treasure we never see and whose suspect we turn out to be—making it both immediately commanding on the wall and conceptually lasting for collectors.

Visual description & condition

The composition centres on a seated woman, shown from the knees up, her dark hair pinned high above a face deliberately divided into two colour zones: pale cream on one side, luminous turquoise on the other, with dark red lips and steady, wide-open eyes that meet the viewer directly. She wears a flame-orange jacket edged in cobalt blue over a black ruffled blouse worked with strokes of white, grey and ochre. Golden ornament earrings hang at each ear, and her folded hands are covered by lace gloves drawn in yellow oil stick over rose-pink skin. She sits on a chair of deep blues and violets whose rounded forms frame her like a throne.

Behind her, the landscape unfolds in broad, wet-in-wet strokes: a green meadow and dark hedges in the middle distance, terraced hills in greens and teals, a dark-blue mountain range, and a summer sky brushed in blue and white. At the left edge, a tree in full blossom—reds, pinks and corals around a pale pink trunk—bursts against the cooler greens. Colours visibly run and merge throughout; perspective and anatomy are intentionally distorted to prioritise emotional weight over realism. The work is signed in green 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 landscapes, drawing directly on the legacy of German Expressionism: bent perspective, heightened colour, and a surface kept deliberately fluid. "La Sentinelle" extends that project into the oldest of painterly genres—the seated portrait—and lets the tradition of the commanding sitter collide with a thoroughly contemporary, high-key palette.

By combining the all-over wet-in-wet method with the returning oil-stick line, Bertermann joins the two halves of his figurative vocabulary in a single canvas: the volatile, merged colour field of the new series and the drawn precision of the old. The result is a guardian figure painted the way authority actually feels—fluid, vivid, and impossible to look away from.

Practical details for buyers:

Original, one-of-a-kind artwork
Acrylic and oil stick on canvas
Dimensions (H x W): 210 x 160 cm (83 × 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.

#mostwanted_art