Pit Stop (2026) — Rodin's Thinker, With the Clock Running

Time is running. A mechanic leans over the racing car, one hand braced on the wing, the other holding his head.

Somewhere in this machine there is a fault. He has to find it now, and he has to get it right the first time.

A condition, not a story

Pit Stop does not show the repair. It shows the moment before it: total concentration, all his energy going into a single thought, while the car waits and the race goes on.

Detail of Pit Stop (2026) by Claus Bertermann - the mechanic's face in turquoise and green, one hand pressed to his temple, the other braced on the wing of the car, drawn in blue, orange and yellow oil stick

The Thinker, standing up

Bertermann has given him the most famous thinking pose in art: the pose of Rodin's The Thinker.

Only this thinker has no time to sit on a rock. He thinks standing up, leaning on a fender, with the clock running. In a sport where everyone races, the hero of this picture is the one who stops for a moment to think, because the right idea is the fastest tool in the pit lane.

A wheel that is already turning

The large wheel in the foreground is painted in spinning circles of orange, yellow and green, as if it were already turning. The car is ready to go. It is only waiting for his idea.

Detail of Pit Stop (2026) by Claus Bertermann - a large orange-red wheel drawn in spinning circles around a bright green hub, on a blue and turquoise car body above a dark green ground

Freedom below, precision above

The picture is built in two separate moves. First the ground: the light sky, the orange-red car behind, the blue and turquoise car in front, the deep blue overalls and the dark green ground, laid in with coarse, broad brushstrokes that settle nothing precisely. Then the drawing, on top of that ground: the face, both hands, the folds of the overalls, the spinning wheel, the headlight and the yellow shoes. The line never sinks into the paint; it stays on top. Like every figurative work in this series, the image is built forward, never scraped back — the exact inversion of the abstract series, where surfaces are built over months and cut back into.

Part of a motor-racing cycle

Pit Stop belongs to a group of 2026 paintings about the golden era of motor racing, together with No Halo, Eau Rouge, Parc Fermé, Pit Stop and Stranded on Track. Each canvas shows a different moment of the same world: courage, concentration and confidence.

An architect's scale

At 150 × 200 cm the mechanic is close to life size, and the wheel is as large as a real one. Bertermann, who holds a Master's degree in Architecture, uses that scale to put the viewer right beside him in the pit lane, close enough to feel the clock.

Made by a real person — not AI

Like every work in the studio, Pit Stop is an original, one-of-a-kind painting, made by hand by a real person, not AI. The spinning lines of the wheel, the running colour, the hand at his temple drawn in a few fast strokes — all of it is intentional, and all of it is the record of a human hand working fast in front of a canvas two metres wide.

Pit Stop, 2026. Acrylic and oil stick on canvas, 150 × 200 cm (height × width). Signed on the front and the back. Part of the figurative works.

→ View Pit Stop in the gallery

This painting belongs to Claus Bertermann’s 2026 figurative series — large-format works in acrylic and oil stick in which the drawn layer always lies on top of the paint, never in it.