Paris engineer wins Picasso painting at charity auction – with $150 ticket
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Mr Ari Hodara's ticket was picked at a ceremony in Paris that was live-streamed from auction house Christie’s.
PHOTO: EPA
DeeperDive is a beta AI feature. Refer to full articles for the facts.
- Engineer Ari Hodara won a Picasso painting, "Tête de femme," worth over €1 million in a charity raffle held in Paris on April 14.
- The raffle raised €12 million to fund Alzheimer's Research Foundation, described as "ridiculous" by the head of the foundation, Mr Olivier de Ladoucette.
- 120,000 tickets were sold at €100 each; this was the third such raffle organised by Peri Cochin with the Picasso family's support.
AI generated
PARIS - An art-loving engineer from Paris was the lucky winner of an original Picasso painting worth over a million euros at a charity raffle in Paris on April 14.
Mr Ari Hodara, 58, who bought his ticket at the weekend, was picked at a ceremony in Paris that was livestreamed from auction house Christie’s, with the funds raised from the event to be donated to research into Alzheimer’s disease.
A total of 120,000 tickets were sold at €100 (S$150) apiece, with a portrait of Dora Maar, one of Picasso’s muses, up for grabs.
Titled “Tête de femme” (Woman’s head), the inky grey and blue gouache work was painted in 1941 and was purchased from a private art dealership, Opera Gallery.
“How do I know this isn’t a prank?“ Mr Hodara asked, when called from the auction house after being picked from a list of ticket buyers in 52 countries.
Organisers, led by French journalist Peri Cochin with backing from the painter’s family and foundation, put on two similar raffles of the Spanish master’s work in 2013 and 2020.
A 25-year-old American from Pennsylvania won the first, while an accountant from Ventimiglia in north-west Italy claimed the second after being given a ticket as a Christmas present by her son.
Mr Ari Hodara won “Tete de femme” (Woman’s head), an inky grey and blue gouache work that Picasso painted in 1941.
PHOTO: EPA
The €12 million raised will be donated to the Alzheimer’s Research Foundation.
“The funding for research is ridiculous,” the head of the foundation, Mr Olivier de Ladoucette, said on April 14. “In our developed societies, we still haven’t understood that this is a major public health issue and that absolutely everyone needs to get involved.
“This Picasso initiative is one more building block so that one day Alzheimer’s will be nothing more than a bad memory,” he added. AFP
