A Paris engineer just swapped around $120 for a Picasso worth more than $1.2 million million. Ari Hodara, 58, learned via video call from Christie's that his 100 euro raffle ticket—number 94,715—had won Tête de Femme (Head of a Woman), a 1941 gouache-on-paper portrait of Picasso's muse Dora Maar, the BBC reports. "How do I know this isn't a prank?" he asked. He said he'd entered on a whim after hearing about the charity draw over the weekend. "You don't expect to win... But I'm very happy because I'm very interested in painting," he said. "First, I will tell the news to my wife, who has yet to return from work," Hodara told the auction house. "And at first, I think I'll take advantage of it and keep it."
The "1 Picasso for 100 euros" raffle, now in its third edition, sold all 120,000 tickets worldwide, raising almost $13 million for Alzheimer's research, the AP reports. Another $1.2 million will go to the work's owner, Opera Gallery. "This Picasso initiative is one more building block so that one day Alzheimer's will be nothing more than a bad memory," said Olivier de Ladoucette, head of France's Alzheimer's Research Foundation.
Journalist Peri Cochin, who organized the event with support from Picasso's family and foundation, noted that while tickets were sold in dozens of countries, it was convenient, and fitting, that the winner lives in the city where the artist spent much of his life. "It's going to be very easy for us to deliver the painting, so we're happy," she said. Previous raffles in 2013 and 2020 funded heritage preservation in Lebanon and sanitation projects in Africa. The 2013 raffle was won by a 25-year-old Pennsylvania resident. The 2020 edition was won by an Italian woman whose son bought her a ticket for Christmas.
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