{"id":6399,"date":"2026-04-15T11:39:22","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T11:39:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/6399\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T11:39:22","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T11:39:22","slug":"picasso-painting-worth-1m-won-by-paris-man-with-117-raffle-ticket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/6399\/","title":{"rendered":"Picasso painting worth $1M won by Paris man with $117 raffle ticket"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Parisian art enthusiast could not believe his luck when he found out Tuesday he\u2019d won a Pablo Picasso painting<\/a> worth $1 million with a $117 raffle ticket.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do I check that it\u2019s not a hoax?\u201d said Ari Hodara, 58, after organizers called him following the draw at Christie\u2019s auction house in the French capital.<\/p>\n

Hodara described himself as an art amateur fond of Picasso<\/a> and said he bought his ticket over the weekend after finding out about the charity raffle by chance during a meal in a restaurant.<\/p>\n

Organizer Peri Cochin talks via video call with Ari Hodara, the winner of the Picasso painting, after the raffle at Christie\u2019s auction house, April 14, 2026. REUTERS<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst, I will tell the news to my wife, who has yet to return from work,\u201d said Hodara, a sales engineer. \u201cAnd at first, I think I\u2019ll take advantage of it and keep it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The third iteration of the \u201c1 Picasso for 100 euros\u201d lottery was for Picasso\u2019s \u201cHead of a Woman,\u201d a portrait of Picasso\u2019s longtime muse and partner Dora Maar. The gouache-on-paper was painted by the artist in 1941.<\/p>\n

The online draw offered the chance to win a $1 million portrait<\/a> by the Spanish artist in aid of\u00a0Alzheimer\u2019s\u00a0research<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hodara, who won Picasso\u2019s \u201cHead of a Woman\u201d in the \u201c1 Picasso for 100 euros\u201d lottery, said he plans to keep the painting. AP<\/p>\n

Organizers said all 120,000 tickets were sold worldwide, netting 12 million euros ($14 million). Of that, 1 million euros will be paid to the Opera Gallery, an international art dealership that owned the painting.<\/p>\n

Gilles Dyan, the gallery founder, said he offered a preferential price for the painting, with the public price at 1.45 million euros.<\/p>\n

The first raffle\u00a0in 2013\u00a0saw\u00a0a Pennsylvania man who worked at a fire-sprinkler business<\/a>\u00a0win \u201cMan in the Opera Hat,\u201d which the Spanish master painted in 1914 during his Cubist period.<\/p>\n

Spanish artist Picasso photographed in Mougins, France in 1966. He died in 1973. Getty Images<\/p>\n

The oil-on-canvas \u201cStill Life\u201d was raffled off in 2020 and won by Claudia Borgogno, an accountant in Italy whose son\u00a0bought her the ticket\u00a0as a Christmas present.<\/p>\n

Painted in 1921, that painting was purchased for the raffle from billionaire art collector David Nahmad, who argued in\u00a0an interview with The Associated Press<\/a>\u00a0that Picasso would have approved of his work being raffled.<\/p>\n

Picasso\u00a0died in 1973.<\/p>\n

The Alzheimer Research Foundation, the charity raffle\u2019s organizer, is based in one of Paris\u2019 leading public hospitals and says it has become France\u2019s leading private financier of Alzheimer-related medical research since its founding in 2004.<\/p>\n

Organizers said the two previous Picasso raffles raised a total of more than 10 million euros for cultural work in Lebanon and water and hygiene programs in Africa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Parisian art enthusiast could not believe his luck when he found out Tuesday he\u2019d won a Pablo…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6400,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[5091,2115,2948,5,5129,4481,3604,30,90],"class_list":{"0":"post-6399","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-paris","8":"tag-alzheimers-disease","9":"tag-art","10":"tag-auctions","11":"tag-france","12":"tag-money","13":"tag-pablo-picasso","14":"tag-painting","15":"tag-paris","16":"tag-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}