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\nAri Hodara said he was surprised by his win<\/p>\n
A Frenchman has won a Picasso painting worth \u20ac1 million in a non-profit raffle.<\/p>\n
The winner, Ari Hodara, a 59-year-old software engineer \u2060from Paris, was selected at random at Christie’s auction house in Paris from 120,000 tickets sold at \u20ac100 apiece.<\/p>\n
The raffle’s proceeds will fund Alzheimer’s disease research.<\/p>\n
“I was surprised, that’s it,” Mr Hodara said during a phone call with organisers shortly after the draw.<\/p>\n
“When you bet on this, you don’t expect to win.”<\/p>\n
Launched in 2013, the “1 Picasso for 100 euros” raffle aims to support charities by giving participants a chance \u200cto win an original work \u2060by the famed Spanish artist. This was the third edition.<\/p>\n
This year’s prize was ‘T\u00eate de Femme’ (Head of a Woman), a gouache-on-paper portrait painted by Pablo Picasso in 1941.<\/p>\n
Rendered in his signature style, the grey, white and cream composition reflects the sombre mood of the era while also suggesting \u200chope, Picasso’s grandson Olivier Widmaier Picasso has said.<\/p>\n
\nAri Hodara said he was surprised by his win<\/p>\n
For the first time in the raffle’s history, all 120,000 tickets were sold, \u2060organisers said. \u20ac1m from the sales will go to international \u200cgallery chain Opera Gallery, the painting’s current owner, they said.<\/p>\n
The remaining proceeds \u2060of approximately \u200c\u20ac11 million will be donated to France’s Fondation Recherche Alzheimer, a leading funder of research into the neurodegenerative disease.<\/p>\n
The raffle’s first edition in 2013 raised \u20ac4.8m and awarded Picasso\u2019s ‘The \u2060Man in the Opera Hat’ to then 25-year-old American Jeffrey Gonano.<\/p>\n
Proceeds went to \u2060the preservation of the Lebanese city of Tyre, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.<\/p>\n
For the second edition, in 2020, an Italian woman won Picasso’s still life ‘Nature Morte’ with a ticket she had received as a Christmas gift from her son.<\/p>\n
Proceeds were donated to sanitation projects in schools and villages in Cameroon, Madagascar \u200cand Morocco.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Frenchman has won a Picasso painting worth \u20ac1 million in a non-profit raffle. The winner, Ari Hodara,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399570,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-399569","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}