Claus Bertermann

Claus Bertermann is a German-Spanish contemporary artist working between abstraction and figuration. His artistic practice is defined by a dual approach, in which two distinct yet interdependent bodies of work coexist: large-scale abstract paintings and raw figurative works.

Born in 1965 in Stuttgart, Germany, and now based in Oviedo, Spain, Claus Bertermann studied architecture at the Technische Universität München (TUM) from 1988 to 1993, graduating as an architect in 1993. His architectural training shaped a lasting understanding of space, proportion, and structure — elements that continue to govern his painting. He then spent more than two decades as an entrepreneur, founding and leading companies, before turning to painting full-time in 2016, at fifty. It was precisely the rigidity of those structured worlds that pushed him toward art as a space of freedom, intuition, and physical engagement — his third career, and the synthesis of the first two.

The relationship between that training and the painting is not one of continuity but of resistance. The architect's eye supplies the underlying order — where weight sits, how a surface divides, what a proportion does to the person standing in front of it — while the painting works against the very rules that produced it, in favour of absolute creative freedom, raw instinct, and deliberate emotional asymmetry. Bertermann describes his own painting process as "a ritual before collapse": a sequence repeated until the structure he has built gives way and something less controlled takes over.

Influences. His points of reference are the painters who made that collapse productive. From Georg Baselitz he takes the licence to distort a figure until it stops being a likeness and becomes a state. From Helen Frankenthaler, the trust in colour as an event rather than a description — paint that behaves rather than depicts. From Gerhard Richter, the discipline of erasure: the understanding that a painting can be improved by what is removed from it. From Jean-Michel Basquiat, the drawn line that refuses to serve the painted ground beneath it. And from Jean Dubuffet, the conviction that raw, unschooled mark-making carries an authority refinement cannot buy. These are permissions rather than stylistic quotations — the finished paintings resemble none of these artists.

Claus Bertermann's abstract works form the continuous core of his practice. Working in large format in oil and acrylic on canvas, these paintings are built through structural layering, repetitive repainting, colour glazes, erasure, and reconfiguration: a surface is established, largely destroyed, and rebuilt — often many times — until it holds. Colour plays a central structural role, creating rhythm, depth, and spatial balance without narrative or figurative reference. Their recurring subject is transience and material depth: the finished canvas carries the visible record of everything it used to be and no longer is. These works are collected for their calm authority, material presence, and architectural compatibility.

In contrast, Claus Bertermann's figurative works function as a deliberate counter-movement. They are created through a more impulsive, bodily process, often using unconventional tools such as paint rollers to break habitual gestures and introduce physical tension. Since 2026 this line has extended into a series of expressionist figurative scenes painted wet-in-wet with large brushes, colours bleeding into one another while the paint is still live, with oil stick carrying the drawn contour on top of the fluid field. These works provoke immediate emotional responses and have led to rapid, high-value direct sales, including mid-five-figure acquisitions by private collectors.

Rather than representing a stylistic contradiction, this dual practice is essential to Claus Bertermann's artistic integrity. The alternation between abstraction and figuration prevents repetition, sustains creative intensity, and expands the emotional and conceptual range of his work.

Exhibitions and institutional presence. In 2019 Claus Bertermann held a solo exhibition at the BBVA Exhibition Hall in Oviedo (BBVA Art Space), the Spanish city that is his base and studio location. In 2024 he donated "Convergence", a large-format oil-on-canvas triptych, permanently to his alma mater; the work hangs in the Amalie Baur Room of the TUM Central Building in Munich, where it stands for the connection between art and science ([TUM press release](https://www.tum.de/en/news-and-events/all-news/press-releases/details/combining-science-and-art)). In 2026 six of his abstract works were shown in *Personal Structures. Confluences* at Palazzo Bembo, Venice, organised by the European Cultural Centre Italy, alongside 175 artists from more than 40 countries. Further solo and group exhibitions include Robinson's Art Gallery, Knokke-Zoute (2024 and 2025) and Sala Trascorrales, Oviedo (2024).

Claus Bertermann's abstract paintings have appeared in auctions at Christie's, Sotheby's, Artcurial, Dorotheum, Van Ham and others, with hammer prices reaching up to 18,900 EUR in 2024 and 2025. His works are held in private collections across Europe, the United States, and Asia.

His studio in Oviedo, Spain, serves as an experimental laboratory where materials, tools, and processes are tested without preconception. For Claus Bertermann, painting is not illustration but confrontation – an invitation to engage with uncertainty, perception, and the raw presence of colour and form.