JACKPOT

Man Bags $1 Million Picasso Painting in Charity Raffle

120,000 tickets in total were sold, raising $14 million for Alzheimer’s research.

A man from Paris turned $117 into a seven-figure fortune after winning a Picasso original in an unusual art raffle. Ari Hodara, 58, entered into the draw at Christie’s auction house in a fundraiser for Alzheimer’s research called 1 Picasso for 100 euros. He later received a call, telling him he had won Picasso’s Head of a Woman painting, worth at least $1 million. Hodara didn’t think it was real. “How do I check that it’s not a hoax?” he said. This is the third iteration of the raffle and saw 120,000 tickets sold across the globe, raising a total of $14 million. Of that pot, about $1 million will go to Opera Gallery, the current owner of the portrait, which the Spanish painter completed in 1941. Picasso died 32 years later in 1973. Hodara says he is an art amateur and a Picasso fan. He found out about the chance to enter the raffle by chance at a restaurant. Though the prize went to a local this year, past winners have come from an ocean away. A Pennsylvania man working at a sprinkler business won Picasso’s Man in the Opera Hat in 2013.