$1mn Picasso yours for just $135
Pablo Picasso’s ‘L’homme au Gubus’, or ‘The Man with the Opera Hat’, is being raffled off this December.
Still stumped for a Christmas present? Then what about an exquisite $1 million Picasso for the living room, yours for just $135 at an online charity raffle.
The perfectly preserved Cubist gouache was bought by an anonymous donor from a New York gallery and given to a charity working to save the ancient city of Tyre in southern Lebanon.
The UNESCO-registered charity has issued 50,000 tickets at 100 euros ($135) each for the first-of-its-kind tombola on December 18 at Sotheby’s in Paris, hoping to raise $5 million.
It wants the money to develop a traditional handicraft village giving young people, women and the disabled jobs in Tyre and to set up an institute for Phoenician studies in Beirut.
Hopefuls have snapped up 40,000 tickets already and Olivier Picasso, Pablo’s grandson, is in New York to drum up interest in the remaining 10,000. People from all over the world have gone online to buy just one or a handful of tickets at www.1picasso100euros.com.
Olivier, who says he has many Picassos of his own, described the signed “L’Homme au Gibus” or “Man in the Opera Hat,” painted in 1914, as a “masterpiece” of museum standard in perfect condition.