Claus Bertermann - Roma 2

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. "Roma 2" belongs to that series and is its first night painting: a Roman street scene lit entirely by headlamp and lamplight. It is the dark half of a pair—"Roma 1" is the same city by day. Each canvas stands entirely on its own; together they hold the two halves of one Roman day.

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: Roma 2
– Year: 2026
– Dimensions (H x W): 130 x 180 cm (51 × 71 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

After midnight Rome changes owners. The tour groups are gone, the restaurants have folded their tables away, and the city is handed over to the people who actually live in it—which in Rome means, overwhelmingly, to scooters. You hear one before you see it: a two-stroke rasp bouncing off six hundred years of stonework, then headlamp light swinging across a wall, then nothing.

"Roma 2" is that sound, painted.

The whole canvas is built on one collision of light. Everything behind the rider is night: a deep, brushed cobalt laid down wet and left restless, with the ghost of a façade drawn into it in red oil stick—scaffolding, shutters, the endless armature of a city permanently under repair. Everything to the right is lamplight: a broad, hot cadmium field pouring in from a source outside the frame, throwing her whole right side into gold. And out of the front of the scooter, four white beams cut left across the blue, headlong, into a street the painting refuses to show us.

She rides into her own light. That is the image, and it is worth sitting with. Her face is lifted and turned, lit cold blue-white against the dark, eyes level, mouth closed—not the performed cool of the daylight canvas but something more private, the expression people wear when they think nobody is watching them at all. In a picture with this much colour violence, she is the still point: red jacket, white shirt, dark blue legs, both hands down on the bars, going somewhere at an hour when nobody goes anywhere for anyone else's benefit.

The city gets to be beautiful at night without being observed. Once in a while somebody sees it anyway.

Why it is worth the price

This is a large-scale, museum-sized painting (130 x 180 cm) in landscape format from Bertermann's 2026 expressionist series—and its first nocturne. For collectors, works from the opening year of a new series carry a meaningful provenance marker; the first night painting within it carries a second, because it is the canvas in which the series proves it can build a picture out of artificial light rather than daylight colour. The pair aspect adds a third: "Roma 1" and "Roma 2" are the day and the night of the same subject and can be acquired as a diptych of two independent, differently keyed paintings.

Technically the canvas joins the two languages of Bertermann's figurative practice in a single field. The blue night, the lamplit gold, the jacket and the road 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 red scaffolding and façade lines scratched into the dark, the black contour of the scooter and the rider's hands, the loose circles of the wheels, the signature at the lower right. Freedom below, precision above—an architect's instinct for structure carrying an expressionist's appetite for colour.

Night subjects are rare in high-key expressive painting for a simple reason: darkness usually kills colour. Here it does the opposite. The blue makes the red burn, the cadmium makes the blue deepen, and the four white beams give the whole surface a direction of travel.

Visual description & condition

The composition shows a rider on a scooter moving from right to left across the canvas, seen from her left side and slightly ahead. Her face is turned up and toward the viewer, painted pale blue-white with violet-outlined eyes, dark brows and violet lips; blonde and yellow hair is laid in with broad strokes and drawn into with oil stick. She wears a vermilion jacket with a raised collar over a white shirt, and dark blue trousers, her legs drawn in black contour; both hands rest on the handlebars, described in white, pink and black over the pale bodywork.

The scooter is painted white, pink and pale yellow with red oil-stick contour, its front shield and headlamp at the left of centre. From the headlamp four long white and pale-blue beams stretch to the left edge of the picture across a deep cobalt ground. The wheels are drawn as loose red and black circles over yellow and white.

The upper left and centre of the canvas are a brushed dark blue field, worked wet and crossed by red oil-stick lines that describe a scaffolded façade and, behind the rider, a second pale figure or window opening outlined in red. The right third is a broad cadmium yellow and orange field of lamplight, over which pale pink and white forms and violet and red scribbled contours suggest further lit architecture; a band of yellow runs along the lower right. Colours visibly run and merge throughout; perspective and anatomy are intentionally distorted to prioritise emotional weight over realism. The work is signed in red 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 Roman canvases connect that project to one of Expressionism's founding subjects: the modern street after dark, lit by its own commerce and traffic rather than by the sun. The Brücke painters found in artificial light a licence to abandon local colour altogether—streets could be green, faces blue, skies any colour the feeling required.

"Roma 2" takes that licence into a contemporary Italian night. The light sources are ordinary and unglamorous—a scooter headlamp, a lamp or lit window off-frame—but they are allowed to dictate the entire palette: cobalt for everything they do not reach, cadmium for everything they do, and four white beams driving left into the dark. It is a city portrait with only one inhabitant in it, and she is not posing for anyone.

Practical details for buyers:

Original, one-of-a-kind artwork
Acrylic and oil stick on canvas
Dimensions (H x W): 130 x 180 cm (51 × 71 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.