Bergman's film Wild Strawberries is called in Italian Il Posto delle Fragole (the place of strawberries) that title has always amazed me. This movie gave me a key to understanding my obsession with strawberries. The connection with a happy childhood, distant from the  present.  

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I started painting strawberries in the academy (NABA) in Milan in 1995. Getting off the tram one specially grey morning I saw beautiful strawberries sparkling like precious stones inside a blue box. I bought them and since then they have become one of my main symbols in my work, but without yet fully understanding the reason for this passion. I thought it was the color, the taste, the scent ... then I realized that in Uruguay the strawberry season was always short, making them expensive and special.they became a bit of a forbidden fruit.

 

Even the sensuality in the fruit itself; juicy, soft, skinless and the seeds shift out. The strawberry is fragile, vulnerable, and beautiful in all its stages of its being.

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For years I did not want to show them, I felt something was missing. On the death of my father, Enrique Okret in 1999, I read his childhood memories in Austria for the first time. Among his writings I found this text:

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In the meadows

all sorts of wild fruit grew.

blackberries, raspberries, cherries

strawberries ...

We filled our tummies 

with blueberries 

until our mouths were totally

blue

As for the strawberries,

if it had not been for my sister

Lucy

I would never would have picked any

because I am colour blind,

unable to distinguish

between shades

of green and red;

at the time I did not know...

Finally...it was for me 

what I would have 

called 

paradise.

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Enrique Okret

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The word place (makom) in Hebrew means also god...I discovered in time that there are many places, many moments in this world where are our experiences are happy, meaningful... therefore the plural- The places of strawberries - I Posti delle Fragole. Each one of us  finds their own…