Kevin Picture this. You’re finishing dinner at a restaurant, hear about a charity raffle, and decide to drop about the cost of a nice bottle of wine on a ticket. Days later, your phone rings and Christie’s auction house in Paris is telling you that you just won a Pablo Picasso painting worth over a million dollars. Your first reaction? Probably the same as Ari Hodara’s, who asked whether the whole thing was a prank.
- A 58-year-old Parisian sales engineer won Picasso’s 1941 portrait “Head of a Woman” with a $117 charity raffle ticket.
- The raffle sold 120,000 tickets worldwide and raised roughly $13 million for Alzheimer’s research.
- This was the third edition of the “1 Picasso for 100 euros” lottery, founded in 2013 by French journalist Péri Cochin.
A Weekend Whim That Paid Off Big
Ari Hodara, an engineer and art enthusiast, learned he was the winner on Tuesday when he answered a video call from Christie’s auction house in Paris. That’s where he became the new owner of an original Pablo Picasso painting worth more than $1.2 million. His stunned reaction captured on that call said it all. He wanted to know how he could be sure the whole thing wasn’t some elaborate hoax.
Hodara described himself as an art amateur fond of Picasso. He said he bought his ticket over the weekend after hearing about the charity raffle by chance during a meal in a restaurant. According to The New York Times, he actually bought two tickets. His winning ticket was number 94,715.
As for what happens next, Hodara had a simple plan. He said he’d tell his wife first, who had yet to return from work, and added that at first, he’d take advantage of it and keep it. Fair enough.
The Painting Behind the Headlines
The prize itself has serious art-world credentials. The third round of the “1 Picasso for 100 euros” lottery featured Picasso’s “Head of a Woman,” a portrait of the artist’s longtime muse and partner Dora Maar, painted in gouache on paper in 1941.
Olivier Picasso said “Tête de femme” was a very interesting work that was painted in the same studio on the Left Bank in Paris as his grandfather’s 1937 masterpiece “Guernica.” That historical connection gives the piece added weight. The period was emotionally charged for Picasso, falling during his attempted divorce from his first wife Olga Khokhlova and the Nazi occupation of Paris.
Before Hodara won it, the portrait was owned by Opera Gallery, an international operation with branches in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and the United States.
How the Numbers Add Up
Organizers said more than 120,000 tickets for the prize draw were sold at about $118 each, raising around $13 million for Alzheimer’s research. Of that haul, $1 million is set to go to Opera Gallery, the painting’s owner, with the remaining funds donated to France’s Alzheimer’s Research Foundation.
The Alzheimer Research Foundation, the charity raffle’s organizer, is based in one of Paris’ leading public hospitals and says it has become France’s top private financier of Alzheimer-related medical research since its founding in 2004. The funds will back scientific programs aimed at understanding the mechanisms of the disease, developing new treatments, and improving the quality of life of patients and their families, supporting research teams in Europe and the United States.
Not the First Lucky Winner
Ordinary people turning small ticket purchases into million-dollar art wins has become a tradition for this event. In the first raffle, in 2013, a Pennsylvania man who worked at a fire-sprinkler business won “Man in the Opera Hat,” which Picasso painted in 1914 during his cubist period.
In 2020, the oil-on-canvas “Still Life” went to Claudia Borgogno, an accountant in Italy whose son had bought her the ticket as a Christmas present. So a fire-sprinkler worker, an Italian accountant, and now a Paris sales engineer. The raffle seems to have a knack for rewarding regular people with masterpieces.
The raffle was the brainchild of Péri Cochin, a French television producer and host and owner of the tableware company Waww La Table. She said she thought it would be great to do a worldwide raffle by selling tickets online, and decided it should be a piece of art by the most famous name, Picasso.
When Lightning Strikes a Dinner Reservation
Hodara’s story feels almost cinematic. A casual restaurant conversation, a small donation to charity, and suddenly a 1941 Picasso is on its way to your living room. Cochin said it was a great thing that the winner lived in Paris, despite tickets being sold in dozens of countries worldwide, making it very easy to deliver the painting.
For everyone else who missed out, there’s always the next round. And in the meantime, Alzheimer’s researchers get a serious funding boost from one of the most creative charity campaigns in the art world.
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