Paris raffle awards $1M Picasso to ticket holder

PARIS

A Parisian man was left in disbelief after winning a Pablo Picasso painting worth $1 million with a $117 raffle ticket.

“How do I check that it’s not a hoax?” said Ari Hodara, 58, after organizers informed him of his win following the draw at Christie's in the French capital.

Hodara, a sales engineer and self-described Picasso enthusiast, said he bought the ticket over the weekend after learning about the charity raffle by chance while dining at a restaurant.

“First, I will tell the news to my wife, who has yet to return from work,” he said. “And at first, I think I’ll take advantage of it and keep it.”

The draw marked the third edition of the “1 Picasso for 100 euros” lottery, this time featuring “Head of a Woman,” a 1941 gouache-on-paper portrait of the artist’s muse and partner Dora Maar.

The online raffle, organized to support Alzheimer’s research, offered participants the chance to win the portrait by the Spanish master.

Organizers said all 120,000 tickets were sold worldwide, generating 12 million euros ($14 million). Of that total, 1 million euros will go to the Opera Gallery, which owned the painting.

Gallery founder Gilles Dyan said the artwork was offered at a preferential price, below its public value of 1.45 million euros.

Previous raffles have also drawn global interest. In 2013, a Pennsylvania man won “Man in the Opera Hat,” painted by Picasso in 1914 during his Cubist period. In 2020, an oil-on-canvas “Still Life,” created in 1921, was won by an Italian accountant whose son had bought the ticket as a Christmas gift.

The charity behind the raffle, the Alzheimer Research Foundation, is based in a leading Paris public hospital and has become one of France’s main private funders of Alzheimer’s research since its founding in 2004.

Organizers said the two previous raffles raised more than 10 million euros for cultural initiatives in Lebanon and water and hygiene programs in Africa.