France raffles $1-million Picasso to raise money for Alzheimer’s research | Canada Voices

One lucky winner will find themselves the owner of a Pablo Picasso painting for less than $120.

A raffle in France is offering the chance to win a $1 million portrait by the Spanish artist for the price of a €100 ticket (US$117), with proceeds going to Alzheimer’s research. The draw takes place Tuesday at Christie’s auction house in Paris.

The third iteration of the “1 Picasso for 100 euros” lottery is for Picasso’s “Head of a Woman,” with proceeds going to Alzheimer’s research.

The gouache on paper was painted by Picasso in 1941.

The first such raffle in 2013 saw a Pennsylvania man who worked at a fire-sprinkler business win “Man in the Opera Hat,” which the Spanish master painted in 1914 during his Cubist period.

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The oil-on-canvas “Still Life” was raffled off in 2020 and made a very happy mom of Claudia Borgogno, an accountant in Italy whose son bought her the ticket as a Christmas present.

Painted in 1921, that painting was purchased for the raffle from billionaire art collector David Nahmad, who argued in an Associated Press interview that Picasso would have approved of raffling his work. Picasso died in 1973.

The Alzheimer Research Foundation, the charity raffle’s organizer, is based in one of Paris’s leading public hospitals and says it has become France’s leading private financier of Alzheimer-related medical research since its founding in 2004.

The organizers’ online sales platform said the number of tickets for Tuesday’s draw has been capped at 120,000, meaning it could net €12 million ($14 million) if they’re all sold.

Of that, 1 million euros will be paid to the Opera Gallery, an international art dealership that owns the painting.

Organizers said the two previous Picasso raffles raised a total of more than €10 million for cultural work in Lebanon and water and hygiene programs in Africa.