Thanks to a ticket offered to her, an Italian won a painting by the famous Spanish painter in a charity lottery.
The draw for the charity lottery “A Picasso for 100 euros” awarded the canvas “Still Life” to an Italian woman (archives).
KEYSTONE / AP / John Leicester
The draw for the charity lottery “A Picasso for 100 euros” to finance access to water projects in Africa by the NGO CARE, awarded the canvas “Still Life” to an Italian woman on Wednesday. More than 5.1 million euros were subscribed in total.
The electronic draw, broadcast live on the internet, took place in very small groups at Christie’s. The beneficiary is an Italian, who picked up the painting with a ticket that had been offered to her.
The bailiff had by his side only Péri Cochin, initiator of the project, Emanuela Croce, director of communication for CARE, and representatives of the Picasso Estate and the Picasso Administration who authorized the operation. “Still Life”, a geometric composition from 1921 representing a piece of newspaper and a glass of absinthe, had been valued at one million euros.
Funds raised in over a hundred countries
Care’s project was to “bring clean water to 200,000 people in Madagascar, Cameroon and Morocco”. 200,000 tickets at 100 euros had been on sale for months on the site “1picasso100euros.com”, with the hope of raising 20 million euros.
Funds have been raised in more than 100 countries, said Péri Cochin. Over 51,000 people paid 100 euros to participate. The French were the most supportive with 29% participation, followed by the Americans (21%) and the Swiss (19%).
“20 million euros was very ambitious. With more than 5 million, we achieved an exceptional result for a very complicated operation in a very complicated period ”, reacted to AFP Emanuela Croce. “We had to reassure that it was a real operation with a real Picasso, it seemed too good to be true. A certain mistrust could slow sales at the start, “she said.
Awareness
She welcomed the realization that “water is crucial for health” in times of a pandemic. “It is all the more important that one in three people on earth does not have access to drinking water,” she noted.
One million euros was to be paid to the owner of the painting, the collector David Nahmad, but he decided to make a gesture and only charge the work for 900,000 euros. 4.2 million euros will finance the Care project.
In 2013, the organizers of this lottery had tested the concept, managing to raise a little less for a renovation project in the Lebanese city of Tire, classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. An American, Jeffrey Gonano, from Pennsylvania, had been the lucky winner of another work by Pablo Picasso.
((ATS)
Posted today at 8:49 pm-
