An Italian woman won a painting by Pablo Picasso, worth about €1m, in a raffle after being gifted the ticket, news wires reported. The winning ticket was pulled out during a live draw at Christie's auction house in Paris. The prize painting is a still life from 1921. It is a relatively small artwork, measuring 23cm by 46cm, which shows a glass of absinthe and a newspaper on a table.

The Sofia Arsenal - Museum of Contemporary Art has once again opened its doors to visitors in the Bulgarian capital. Local fans of Spanish art can now appreciate in person works by Carles Santos, a multidisciplinary artist from the province of Castello. He is a print artist, an opera and ballet music composer, a playwright.

My artistic practice has grown in leaps and bounds since I first started building birds. Every bird is different from the other in terms of its size, texture, and the cut of the feathers and colors of the plumage. I personally feel that it’s a learning process and there’s still a lot that needs to go into it to make it look realistic, New Delhi-based artist Niharika Rajput says in an interview to MyModernMet.

A virtual studio tour with American sculptor Jonathan Prince, who will give exclusive access to his impressive atelier in the Berkshires in rural Massachusetts, and share insights into his work as well as some highlights from his career, will take place on 21 May at 16:00 - 17:30 (Brussels) on Zoom.

Festival of Hope, organised by European Poetry Platform Versopolis that makes opportunities for emerging poets, and supported by the Commission’s Creative Europe programme, will keep “open” its doors until mid-June.

Pavel Koychev has always been connected to space, nature and large-scale works. He focuses on bringing down barriers - in arts, realms and canons. Daringly, much like Leonardo, he does more than creating artworks, he materialises ideas that need to be lived. He compares his work to concerts or plays - a one-time experience that has a beginning and an end. Much like human life, which, nevertheless, continues to exist beyond death - here, there, somewhere, says one of Bulgaria's best sculptors in an interview to ArtSofia.bg.

For Meggan Joy to begin creating her flowery assemblages, she first has to plant the seeds. The Seattle-based artist cultivates a plot in a community garden throughout the summer months, tending to each fern and vibrant petal.

Haruki Murakami, one of Japan’s most acclaimed novelists, will host a radio special to try to lift the nation’s spirits as the state of emergency over the novel coronavirus continues.

Would you put your slippers on display? The global coronavirus pandemic is still raging but museums are already gathering testimony and objects to remember life under lockdown.

The Italian Cultural Institute (Istituto Italiano di Cultura) in Sofia, in association with the BulFoto Agency, is organising this season’s first open-air exhibition in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia. Entitled Longing for Italy, the photo exhibition is being set up in the Crystal Garden, a popular socialising spot with citizens of the capital, and can be viewed from 12 until 22 May.