Win a Picasso for €100: million-euro masterpiece raffled for Alzheimer’s research
The Recherche Alzheimer Foundation is selling 'tickets of hope' for a chance to own the Malaga-born genius’s 1941 work, Tête de femme
For just 100 euros, you could be the proud owner of a Picasso - and all for a good cause.
The French foundation, Recherche Alzheimer, which funds research into Alzheimer's, is raffling off a valuable work of art by the Malaga-born genius.
That small investment will be multiplied 10,000 times over and one lucky winner will be able to treasure 'Tête de femme' (Head of a Woman), a piece by one of history's most influential artists.
The foundation is selling 120,000 'tickets of hope' for Alzheimer's patients and their families. One of the buyers will become the new owner of the 38.9 by 25.4 centimetre gouache painted by Picasso in 1941 and currently valued at one million euros.
It comes from the Opera Gallery collection, shown in 30 countries and based in Madrid since 2023. Gilles Dyan is a founding partner of Recherche Alzheimer, which supports more than 40 research teams in Europe.
The draw will take place on 14 April at Christie's Paris headquarters. Entries can be made via the website www.1picasso100euros.com. There will be only one winner. All other participants will have the satisfaction of having contributed to research advances into this disease.
Such an initiative is nothing new, but it is "exceptional", according to its organisers, who have already raffled off two Picassos. In 2013, Jeffrey Gonano, a 25-year-old from Pennsylvania, became the owner of a Picasso drawing valued at over one million dollars.
Five million euros were raised for the International Association for the Safeguarding of Tyre, a Lebanese World Heritage city where a village was built to revitalise traditional crafts, create jobs and stimulate the local economy.
In 2019 Claudia Borgognona, an Italian accountant from Ventimiglia, was the winner of another Picasso piece. Her 25-year-old son Lorenzo bought her a raffle ticket as a Christmas present.
She became the owner of a 1921 still life by Picasso valued at one million euros, donated by collector David Nahmad. Another five million euros were raised for the NGO Care through the sale of 51,140 tickets across 100 countries. Those euros funded water purification and hygiene programmes in some of the hardest-hit regions of Africa, a crucial issue during the covid-19 pandemic.
Recherche Alzheimer funds research to better understand the mechanics of a disease that affects 800,000 people in Spain and where 40,000 cases are newly diagnosed each year. Some 35 million people worldwide suffer from Alzheimer's, a figure that could double by 2050, according to the World Health Organisation.
