$1m Picasso to be raffled for €100

For aspiring art collectors everywhere, there is hope.

Sotheby’s Paris is giving away a $1m (€727,000) masterpiece by Pablo Picasso for just €100 in an unusually affordable charity raffle on 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 for the Safeguard of Tyr owns the Picasso, and hopes to raise €5m to protect the ancient Lebanese city of Tyr, a Unesco heritage site.

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