An incredibly ‘lucky’ draw: Italian woman wins 1-million-euro Picasso
An Italian accountant whose son purchased her the raffle ticket as a Christmas current gained a Pablo Picasso oil portray valued at 1 million euros ($1.1 million) in a charity draw Wednesday.
Claudia Borgogno summed up her amazement in a single phrase: “Incredible.”
“I have never won anything before,” the 58-year-old informed The Associated Press from her residence in Ventimiglia, northern Italy. She stated she likes Picasso, and the prospect of with the ability to grasp one of many 20th Century grasp’s work on her wall was nonetheless sinking in.
Her son, Lorenzo Naso, purchased two tickets in December, sending one to his mom.
“It was maybe the best decision in my life,” he informed The AP.
The ticket was picked out in an digital draw on the public sale home Christie’s in Paris.
Organizers valued the portray, Nature Morte, or Still Life, as being value 1 million euros. The billionaire artwork collector who supplied it, David Nahmad, stated the work is value “at least two, three times” that.
“Claudia has won this extraordinary painting tonight that is worth one million and so is a millionaire,” organizer Peri Cochin introduced after Borgogno’s identify and profitable ticket quantity have been displayed on a display.
The 51,140 tickets offered on-line for 100 euros ($109) every. Proceeds are going to supply water for villagers in Madagascar and Cameroon.
The draw was initially scheduled for March however delayed by the coronavirus pandemic. Naso informed The AP that he hadn’t realized it was happening Wednesday and wasn’t watching the dwell broadcast.
The name from organizers to say that his mom had gained got here as shock.
She didn’t imagine it.
A cameraman, carrying a protecting face masks, stands in entrance of the portray “Nature Morte, 1921” by Spanish painter Pablo Picasso earlier than the charity raffle official draw to designate the winner of the Picasso oil portray for 100 euros at Christie’s public sale home in Paris, May 20, 2020. REUTERS/Charles Platiau
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“When I arrived and I told her she has won she was like, ‘Please don’t joke,’” he stated. “She is not going to sleep tonight.”
Naso, an analyst for the European Union’s securities markets regulator, lives in Paris however has been staying along with his mom in Italy in the course of the coronavirus lockdown.
“It was a pretty awful period for us during this lockdown and now it’s great news,” he stated.
Nahmad can be paid 900,000 euros for the work. The portray was the smallest of 300 works by Picasso that he owns, the biggest personal assortment of works by the Spanish artist.
The small nonetheless life measuring 9in by 18in (23cm by 46cm), which is signed Picasso, reveals a newspaper and a glass of absinthe on a wooden desk. Picasso painted it in 1921.
Tickets have been purchased in additional than 100 nations, with the majority offered in France, the United States, Switzerland and Italy.
The 1 Picasso for 100 euros undertaking organised by French charity home Aider les Autres (Help the Others) goals to lift funds for numerous humanitarian initiatives.
The winner of an identical raffle in 2013 was a 25-year-old hearth sprinkler employee from Pennsylvania who took residence Picasso’s 1914 work L’Homme au Gibus (Man With Opera Hat), valued at greater than $1 million.
— with inputs from Associated Press
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