Claus Bertermann - Roma 1

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 1" belongs to that series and brings it out of the interior and into the street. It is the daylight half of a pair: "Roma 1" is the same city by day that "Roma 2" is after dark. Each painting 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 1
– 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

Rome does not hold still for anybody. The city is experienced almost entirely in passing—a face at a window, a waiter turning away, someone crossing the Lungotevere against the light. You get three seconds. Then the traffic closes and the moment belongs to the street again.

"Roma 1" is a painting made out of one of those three seconds, and it is composed as an act of refusal: she is not allowed to pass.

The scooter comes head-on, orange and enormous, filling the lower half of the canvas and pushed so far forward that the front wheel has already left the picture. The rider is caught in the instant she has noticed the person watching her. Her hands stay on the bars. Her shoulders are still travelling. Only the face has stopped—turned squarely out of the painting, calm, unhurried, entirely unbothered—and it holds there while everything else in the picture keeps moving.

That is the joke of the composition and its whole emotional charge. The speed is real: the façades on the left have dissolved into vertical streaks, the air behind her shoulders is torn into ribbons of green, red and blue, the black oil-stick line skids across the bodywork like a slipped brake. And in the middle of that, one perfectly still face, looking back. Every Roman knows this expression. It is the look of someone who has been watched by tourists for two thousand years and has long since decided how much of it to return.

There is no drama here, no narrative, nothing to resolve. Just a woman on a scooter on an ordinary morning, going somewhere that has nothing to do with us, briefly and generously visible. The painting keeps her in the frame for as long as the wall stands—which is, in the end, the only thing painting can do that a city cannot.

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 one of the two Roman street canvases that take the series outdoors for the first time. For collectors, works from the opening year of a new series carry a meaningful provenance marker. The pair aspect adds a second one: "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—one built on daylight and cobalt, one on darkness and lamplight.

Technically the canvas joins the two languages of Bertermann's figurative practice in a single field. The façades, the road, the rider's clothing and the whole restless background 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 heavy black contour that describes the scooter's body and headlamp, the scribbled window grids in the buildings, the drawn folds of the jacket, the signature at the lower right. Freedom below, precision above—an architect's instinct for structure carrying an expressionist's appetite for colour.

The result is a painting with genuine forward pressure. It reads from across a room as pure colour and motion, and rewards a close look with a face that is doing something very specific.

Visual description & condition

The composition is dominated by a scooter seen head-on in orange and cadmium yellow, its front section filling the lower third of the canvas and drawn throughout with heavy black oil-stick contour. The rider sits upright behind the handlebars, both hands on the grips, her forearms drawn in green and black over red.

Her face is painted pale and modelled with pink and green, with violet-outlined eyes, dark brows and violet lips; the gaze meets the viewer directly. Short blue-black hair frames the face, set inside an orange and red hood or collar that flares out to the left. She wears a dark green and black jacket over a vermilion top, the fabric described in long drawn strokes of black and green oil stick, with passages of yellow and white worked wet into the dark.

Behind her the street is built from broad vertical bands: at the left a pale grey, pink and yellow façade streaked downward and scribbled over with red and black window grids; at the right a yellow and cream building with red and crimson oil-stick marks; behind her head a deep cobalt field crossed by a white diagonal. To the left of the rider the air breaks into long horizontal ribbons of green, red, turquoise and white, reading as speed and wind. Below, the road runs pale blue and white with red and orange strokes.

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, and the figure who moves through it without stopping. Kirchner painted Berlin's pavements this way—tilted, accelerated, and full of people who are looking at each other without meeting. Bertermann relocates the motif to a city where the scooter has replaced the pedestrian as the basic unit of urban life, and where the encounter is even shorter.

"Roma 1" is the daylight statement of that idea: high-key colour, open sky-blue, a façade dissolving into speed, and one rider who returns the look for exactly as long as it takes to pass.

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.