For Just $117 USD, This Picasso Could Be Yours
A charity raffle invites first-time collectors to take a chance on the $1.1 million USD masterpiece.
Summary
- The “1 Picasso for 100 Euros” charity raffle returns, offering up the painter’s 1941 portrait “Tête de femme”
- With a €100 EUR (about $117 USD) buy-in, the winner will be selected on April 14 at Christie’s Paris
- Funds from ticket sales will benefit Fondation Recherche Alzheimer, a French organization supporting Alzheimer’s research
The international charity raffle “1 Picasso for 100 Euros” is back, offering art lovers a chance to bring home a masterpiece for an easy, €100 EUR (about $117). Now in its third edition, the upcoming initiative centers around a 1941 work by the great Spanish painter, with proceeds pledged to Fondation Recherche Alzheimer, a French organization supporting Alzheimer’s research. The winner, who will walk away with the €1 million (roughly $1.1 million) work, will be drawn from a pool of up to 120,000 tickets on April 14 at Christie’s Paris.
This year’s prize is “Tête de femme” (1941), a gouache-on-paper portrait, hailing from the Opera Gallery collection. The piece was created during, what Olivier Picasso described as, an “extremely complicated” period in the artist’s life, reflected in its muted brown, gray and black hues.
The raffle has a track record of turning ordinary participants into owners of extraordinary works. In its debut run in 2013, 25-year-old Jeffrey Gonano of Pennsylvania won “L’Homme au Gibus” (1914), with funds supporting the revival of traditional crafts in Tyre, Lebanon. Seven years later, Italy’s Claudia Borgogno secured Picasso’s “Nature Morte” (1921) after receiving a ticket as a birthday gift from her son; proceeds from that edition went toward rehabilitating wells in Cameroon and Madagascar.
For more information on the raffle and how to enter, head to the initiative’s website.
