Martin Köster
New York early evening VII, 2025. Oil on canvas, 135 × 155 cm. © Martin Köster.
Martin Köster creates paintings that glow with the afterimage of movement.
Martin Köster is a German painter whose practice focuses on urban environments as emotional spaces. Known as “The City Painter,” he is fascinated by the energy that emerges in cities after dark: reflections on wet asphalt, glowing windows, dancing light trails from passing cars.
Born in Hannover in 1988 and trained as an architect, Köster developed a signature style that blends the structural sensibility of city planning with the emotional intuition of light-based composition.
Since 2018, his work has been featured in exhibitions worldwide — including New York, London, Hong Kong, Paris, Rome, Moscow, and Aspen. His paintings have resonated with audiences across Europe, Asia, and North America, capturing something both local and universal in the language of urban light.
Working from photographs, sketches, and rooftop studies, Köster’s paintings feel like memory rendered in pigment — intimate and immediate, cinematic and timeless.
New York a morning to remember II, 2025. Oil on canvas, 130 × 150 cm. © Martin Köster.
Köster captures the transformation of urban life after dark — when streets reflect stories, and neon echoes feel like memory. His work is rooted in observation, yet refracted through a lens of cinematic nostalgia and romantic tension. Each canvas reflects the rhythm of the city as something felt rather than seen.
Whether painted from rooftops at night or composed in solitude in his studio, Köster’s cityscapes become metaphors: rain-slicked streets lit by longing, towering buildings wrapped in silence, and headlights that shimmer like dreams in motion.
What drew us to his practice is not only the painterly precision, but the emotional architecture behind it. Köster understands light as narrative, space as rhythm, and stillness as a form of presence. His works are both grounded and ghostlike — documents of real places, but always just one layer removed from reality.
Through our collaboration, APANAGE seeks to expand Köster’s unique urban vision into new formats of visibility — from curated billboard interventions to collector editions and global presentations.
New York golden evening III, 2025. Oil on board, 61 × 61 × 5 cm. © Martin Köster.
Available Original Works
by Martin Köster
All listed works are unique or part of a limited edition, created using physical materials such as textile, pigment, and hand-applied media. Each piece is signed by the artist and includes a certificate of authenticity. APANAGE provides professional packaging and global shipping.
“New York a morning to remember II”
Oil on Canvas, 130 × 150 cm
Unique piece
“New York early evening VII”
Oil on Canvas, 135 × 145 cm
Unique piece
Not ready for an original? Start with a print.
For collectors at the beginning of their journey or those who want to bring a piece of Martin Köster’s visual world into their space — APANAGE offers a limited 20/20 print on canvas.
Each print is an entry point into Köster’s visual language: precise, symbolic, emotionally resonant.