A resident of Paris has emerged as the winner of a Picasso painting valued at 1 million euros (approximately $1.6 million) after purchasing a raffle ticket for just 100 euros.
This online raffle, conducted in the French capital, was organized to benefit Alzheimer’s research initiatives.
The fortunate winner, Ari Hodara, initially suspected that the call informing him of his win was a joke. “How do I know this isn’t a prank?” he inquired during the conversation with the raffle organizers.
Ari Hodara, a 58-year-old software engineer, was randomly chosen from a pool of 120,000 tickets sold at 100 euros each at Christie’s auction house in Paris. The funds raised from this raffle are earmarked for research into Alzheimer’s disease.
The “1 Picasso for 100 euros” raffle, which began in 2013, was designed to support charitable causes while offering participants the chance to win an original Picasso artwork.
Describing himself as an art enthusiast with a particular fondness for Picasso, Mr. Hodara purchased his ticket after discovering the raffle during a meal at a restaurant over the weekend. “First, I will share the news with my wife, who is still at work,” he added. “And to start, I think I’ll enjoy keeping it for myself.”
This raffle marked its third iteration, with this year’s prize being “Tête de Femme” (Head of a Woman), a gouache-on-paper portrait created by Picasso in 1941. According to Olivier Widmaier Picasso, the artist’s grandson, the piece embodies the somberness of its time while also hinting at a message of hope.
Notably, all 120,000 tickets were sold for the first time in the raffle’s history, as confirmed by the organizers. Of the revenue generated, 1 million euros will be allocated to Opera Gallery, the current holder of the painting, while the remaining approximately 11 million euros will be contributed to France’s Fondation Recherche Alzheimer, a major supporter of research into the neurodegenerative illness.
The inaugural raffle in 2013 raised 4.8 million euros and awarded Pablo Picasso’s “The Man in the Opera Hat” to Jeffrey Gonano, a then 25-year-old American. The proceeds were directed toward the preservation efforts of Tyre, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Lebanon.
In the second raffle held in 2020, an Italian woman won the still life “Nature Morte,” a gift from her son for Christmas. The funds raised were used to support sanitation projects in schools and communities across Cameroon, Madagascar, and Morocco.
