A programmer from France won a painting by Pablo Picasso in the lottery

The lottery ticket cost 100 euros. The painting is worth a million

Parisian Ari Hodara won a painting by Pablo Picasso worth about a million euros. The work of art was raffled off for a charity raffle, the cost of which was 100 euros.

“How do I know this isn’t a prank?” - asked Hodara, answering a video call from the Christie's auction house, which held the lottery. “When you make a bet like this, you don’t expect to win...” he added.

Convinced of the reality of what was happening, Khodara said that he was a programmer and a lover of painting. He bought a ticket for a charity lottery after accidentally learning about it during lunch at a restaurant. The winner's ticket had the number 94,715 (a total of 120 thousand tickets were sold).

Khodara became the owner of the work “Head of a Woman.” This is a portrait of Picasso's muse and partner Dora Maar, painted in 1941. The artist's grandson Olivier Picasso noted that this work was painted in the same Parisian workshop where Picasso created his masterpiece Guernica, dedicated to the Spanish Civil War, in 1937.

“ This period [in 1941] was also very difficult due to the Nazi occupation of Paris. Therefore, the colors [in the painting “Woman’s Head”] are darker than usual, brown, black and gray predominate. Although this is a beautiful depiction of a woman, it has the spirit of Picasso. Grandfather kept this painting as a reminder of that time,” added the artist’s grandson.

The charity lottery “1 Picasso for 100 euros” was held for the third time. The idea of ​​holding it belonged to the French journalist Peri Cochin, who enlisted the support of the family and the Picasso Foundation. Lottery tickets are sold online, and the proceeds go to charitable projects. This time, the lottery organizers collected 12 million euros. Of these, one million will be donated to the Parisian Opera Gallery (the owner of the painting), and the remaining money will be given to the Fondation Recherche Alzheimer (the French foundation for Alzheimer's disease research).

The first lottery “1 Picasso for 100 euros” was held in 2013. Then the winner was 25-year-old American from Pennsylvania Jeffrey Gonano. He received the work "Man in a Top Hat", painted by Picasso in 1914. The lottery generated 4.8 million euros. The money went towards preserving the ancient city of Tyre, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Lebanon.

The lottery was held for the second time in 2020. It was won by an Italian from Ventimiglia, Claudia Borgogno. Her son bought her a ticket for the lottery, where Picasso’s work “Still Life” was played, as a Christmas present. The funds raised—€5.1 million—were donated to projects to improve sanitation in schools and villages in Cameroon, Madagascar and Morocco.