Kaffeemitte

MARION DIETERLE / Acrylic painting on canvas
„Here“ / 2023 Umbria / 70x46 cm
„Winter, Sky“ / 2025 Umbria / 70x50 cm
„Tissues“ / 2024 Umbria / tempera and acrylic on canvas, three parts 3x39x19 cm
Marion Dieterle has been living in Umbria since 2021. Before moving there, she worked in Cologne, having originally trained as a dancer. Her move to Italy also brought about a change in her artistic practice. Today, she focuses on painting, complemented by performative installations. Her work is the result of her everyday contact with the landscape and its natural rhythms. In 2024, Marion Dieterle founded an artist residency. So far, eleven artists from different disciplines have been guests, including musicians, visual artists and authors. This curatorial work has become an important part of her own artistic practice. The collaborative work and thinking on site expand her own work and shift the focus from individual production to an open, process-oriented understanding of art.
The large painting shows the view from Greppoleschietto towards Lago Trasimeno. It is based on a recurring visual impression: changing light moods and colours, distant horizon lines. The hilly landscape creates a pronounced sense of depth, reinforced by the shifting light and the play of shadows cast by the clouds. This continuous change – throughout the day as well as with the changing seasons – forms the basis of the painting.
The three smaller works focus on excerpts, details. Micro-views of the landscape. Marion Dieterle is painting what she perceives as a phenomenon specific to this place: a permanent glow in the landscape. Even in winter, the warmth of summer remains visible – in the light, in the colours, in the vegetation. Leaves, soils and surfaces continue to carry this stored heat. .dieterle

LINDA NAU / Analoge photography
„Nur zum Meer ist es ein wenig weit“
Greppolischieto, 2016
Linda Nau grew up in Umbria in a commune not far from Perugia. At the age of sixteen, she left the region to move to Germany—first to Munich, later to Cologne. She studied Communication Design at the University of the Arts, focusing on photography and mastering analogue techniques that would later define her artistic practice.
For her graduation project, Linda returned to her roots to photograph the commune and her parents’ nearby house. The work was produced using an analogue Pentax 67 medium-format camera. In total, she shot approximately 40 rolls of film, resulting in around 400 photographs - of which she published 45 in a book. The series is a reflection on the place she still calls home, yet one she felt compelled to leave early on.
Linda describes Umbria as a place of contrasts: idyllic yet rough, marked by a sparse landscape, cold winters and dry summers. Through the lens, she revisited her childhood—the slowness of rural life and the immense sense of freedom, set against feelings of loneliness and being cut off from the wider world.
For a long time, she perceived these lands as rather unphotogenic. It was only through the process of photographing them that she began to recognize their aesthetic potential. The exhibition offers insight into this rediscovery: Linda’s engagement with the land of her childhood and memories between freedom and isolation, roughness and beauty.

STUDIES IN LINE by Lydia Prien
Berlin 2025 / Colored Pencil on 190g/m²
In addition to the prints we are presenting in the group exhibition, we are also showing some originals. These works highlight the challenges and significance of a hand-painted picture. There is no way to digitally alter the work, and it is practical proof of genuine craftsmanship. Overall, these skills have already declined due to advancing computer technology, and the development of AI will likely mean that even fewer people will be willing to go the extra mile to perfect this art form.
That is why the aesthetic and technical expertise of artist Lydia Prien is a great enrichment to our collection. Thank you for trusting us to exhibit your drawings and for reminding us how little time has passed since pictures were done only by hand. The changes that these developments will bring can only be guessed at this point.
If things continue as they are, there might soon be very little demand for hand-painted pictures, for hand-made art. Just as there is now only a small market for hand-painted tableware. And if the incentive that comes with professionalization is missing, fewer and fewer people will devote themselves entirely to creating art. Lydia Prien gives us an answer to the question of what art production freed from economic principles might look like—she did not paint these pictures to sell them. The entire process, from the idea to the creation to the moment when the works are visible to the public at Kaffeemitte, is purely driven by intrinsic motivation. And that is perhaps what we can learn from artists like Lydia Prien: creating and exhibiting art creates joy and meaning! And in this race, AI will never be able to catch up with us.