Sotheby’s Paris to give away $1m masterpiece by Pablo Picasso in €100 charity raffle

Man in the Opera Hat will be used to raise money to protect the ancient Lebanese city of Tyre

Peri Cochin, organiser of the raffle 'One Picasso for 100 Euros', stands in front of the goauche 'L'Homme au Gibus, 1914' (Man with Opera Hat) by painter Pablo Picasso (Reuters)

For aspiring art collectors everywhere, there is hope.

Sotheby’s auction house in Paris is giving away a $1m (£610,000) masterpiece by Pablo Picasso for just €100 (£84) in an unusually affordable charity raffle next Wednesday.

The 1914 work Man in the Opera Hat, which features vivid shapes in opaque gouache paint, dates from the Spanish master’s Cubist period. Raffle tickets – limited to 50,000 – have been available online since April. The International Association to Save Tyre owns the Picasso, and hopes to raise €5m (£4.2m) to protect the ancient Lebanese city of Tyre, a Unesco World Heritage Site.

Picasso’s grandson Olivier said his grandfather, who died in 1973, would have been “amused to participate in an event like this”.

AP