Claus Bertermann (1965) - Common Ground

Artist: Claus Bertermann

OFFICIAL WEBSITE: www.bertermann.art

Claus Bertermann (b. 1965, Stuttgart, Germany) 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 in heightened, emotionally charged colour, guided by the painters of German Expressionism — a ground set down in coarse brushstrokes, with the drawn oil-stick line laid on top of it afterwards and never worked into it. "Common Ground" belongs to that series and takes on the oldest scene in European art: two young people under a fruit tree.

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: Common Ground
– Year: 2026
– Dimensions (H x W): 200 x 240 cm (79 × 94 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 young couple under a fruit tree. In Western painting that sentence has only ever had one ending. Somebody reaches up, somebody takes, and everything after that is consequence. Cranach painted it, Rubens painted it, every altarpiece in Europe has a version of it hanging in a side chapel.

So count the fruit here. There are more than fifteen of them, orange, ripe, drawn in loose scribbled rings, hanging within easy reach on every branch the blue tree puts out.

Nobody is reaching. Nobody has even looked up.

The two of them are sitting facing forward, out of the picture, at whoever is standing in front of it—her eyes level and steady, his slightly narrowed, both of them entirely uninterested in the one prop the scene was supposed to be about. The fruit is not the offer in this painting. The fruit is the weather.

The real event is below the shoulders, and it is easy to miss because it looks like brushwork. Follow the line between the two figures downward. At the faces they are unmistakably two people, two skin tones, two heads of hair, hers green-black, his cobalt blue. At the collar the boundary starts to fail. By the chest there is one shared mass of orange, crimson and dark green; by the lap there is no second body left to find. Below the waist the painting simply stops distinguishing them.

That is the twist, and it is also the title. "Common Ground" is not a metaphor about agreement. It is a literal description of the lower half of this canvas: the place where two people stop being two, painted as exactly that and nothing more polite.

And the tree is in on it. The trunk, the branches and the drawn contours of both faces are laid down in the same cobalt blue oil stick, by the same hand, in the same gesture. The tree is not scenery behind the couple. It is made of the identical material they are, growing out of the ground they share—which is the only interpretation of paradise this painting is willing to offer, and, on balance, the better one.

Why it is worth the price

This is a large-scale, museum-sized painting (200 x 240 cm) in landscape format and one of the largest canvases in Bertermann's 2026 figurative series. For collectors, works from the opening year of a new series carry a meaningful provenance marker, and within this series "Common Ground" holds a singular position: it is the double portrait, the one canvas built around two figures instead of one, and it takes on the most heavily painted scene in European art history—the couple beneath the fruit tree—by removing the fruit from the plot.

Scale is doing real work here. At 240 cm across, the tree is close to life size, which means the fruit hangs at the height it would hang at in an orchard and the two figures meet a standing viewer at eye level. The picture does not illustrate the encounter; it stages it in the room.

Technically the canvas is built in two separated moves, which is the method behind Bertermann's figurative work. First the ground: the yellow light, the blue trunk, the teal band at the left and the orange mass of the bodies are laid in with coarse, broad brushstrokes that keep the movement of the arm visible and settle nothing precisely. Only then the drawing: the oil stick goes over that painted field and sets the contours — both faces and eyes, the scribbled rings of the fruit, the green blades of foliage, the branches of the tree, the black lattice across the whole lower third. The drawn line does not follow the painted ground beneath it; it lies on top of it and keeps its own authority. Freedom below, precision above—an architect's instinct for structure carrying an expressionist's appetite for colour.

Visual description & condition

The composition shows two young people seated close together, slightly right of centre, beneath a large tree that fills the upper half of the canvas. The tree is painted in strong cobalt and ultramarine, its trunk rising left of centre and its branches reaching to both edges of the picture; more than fifteen round orange fruits, drawn as scribbled rings in orange and red oil stick, hang across the branches, and green oil-stick strokes stand in for leaves.

The figure at the left has pale yellow-green skin and a dense mass of green and black hair; her face is drawn in blue oil stick with almond eyes, dark pupils, a fine nose and a small orange-red mouth. The figure at the right has the same pale yellow-green skin and cobalt blue hair drawn in short strokes, with a longer face, blue-drawn eyes and an orange mouth. Their heads touch. Between and below them the bodies merge into one continuous field of orange, vermilion, dark green, black and violet, with no boundary drawn between the two figures below the shoulders.

The upper background is cadmium and lemon yellow with white passages and pale yellow-green; a broad band of teal and blue runs across the left middle ground, crossed by green and orange strokes. The lower third of the canvas is dominated by a large orange field, crossed by heavy blue oil-stick branches and by loose black scribbled lattices; violet and purple passages sit at the lower right and lower centre.

Colours visibly run and merge throughout; perspective and anatomy are intentionally distorted to prioritise emotional weight over realism. The work is signed in blue-violet 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, a surface kept deliberately fluid, and a drawn line that stays visibly on top of it.

The couple under the fruit tree entered European painting as a moral machine. The tree supplied the temptation, the fruit supplied the turning point, and the two figures supplied the guilt. Even when the Expressionists took the scene out of the garden and into their own summer landscapes, the arrangement survived: nature offering something, people taking it, the painting keeping score.

"Common Ground" keeps the cast and dismantles the machine. The tree is still there, the fruit is still there, and both have been demoted to setting. What the painting is actually about is two people who have been sitting long enough that the paint no longer bothers to tell them apart—and a piece of ground that, for once, belongs to both of them.

Practical details for buyers:

Original, one-of-a-kind artwork
Acrylic and oil stick on canvas
Dimensions (H x W): 200 x 240 cm (79 × 94 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.