The reaction of the Frenchman who won a Picasso painting, worth one million euros, in a raffle
Ari Hodara, a 59-year-old software engineer from Paris, won a painting valued at more than one million euros on Tuesday in the “1 Picasso for 100 euros” raffle.
The Frenchman was randomly selected at the Christie's auction house in Paris, from a total of 120,000 tickets sold at the price of 100 euros each. Proceeds from the raffle will fund Alzheimer's research.
“I was surprised, that's all,” said Hodara, during a telephone conversation with the organizers, shortly after the draw. “When you bet on it, you don't expect to win,” he added.
The prize of this year's edition was “Tête de Femme” (Head of a Woman), a painting made by Pablo Picasso in 1941 and valued at more than 1 million dollars.
“Tête de Femme” is approximately 38 centimeters high and 25 centimeters wide. The woman's face, rendered in various shades of gray, is intentionally distorted, in Picasso's unmistakable cubist style, CNN wrote before the raffle.
It is the first time that all 120,000 tickets have been sold
The “1 Picasso for €100” raffle was launched in 2013 and aims to support charities by giving participants the chance to win an original work by the famous Spanish artist.
It was the third edition and also the first time when all 120,000 tickets were sold, according to the organizers, who specified that one million euros of the collected amount will go to the international gallery chain Opera Gallery, the current owner of the painting.
The rest of the proceeds, approximately 11 million euros, will be donated to the Fondation Recherche Alzheimer, a major funder of research into this neurodegenerative disease.
The first edition of the raffle, in 2013, raised 4.8 million euros and awarded Picasso's “L`Homme au Gibus” painting to a then 25-year-old American, Jeffrey Gonano. The proceeds were used to preserve the Lebanese city of Tyre, included in the UNESCO World Heritage Site.
A second edition, in 2020, supported the programs were donated to sanitation projects in schools and villages in Cameroon, Madagascar and Morocco. Then an Italian woman won the painting “Nature Morte” with a ticket she received as a gift from her son for Christmas.
