Picasso raffle: Sotheby's offers $1m original for €100 in online auction

Picasso's grandson has launched an online raffle in association with Sotheby's, giving art lovers a chance to win the 1914 gouache for 100 euros

Picasso's 'Man with Opera Hat' is being auctioned online for €100 in association with Sotheby's (Getty Images)

A Picasso gouache painting worth $1 million could be yours for £80.

An online Christmas raffle has been launched by the artist’s grandson, Olivier Widmaier Picasso, which allows art fans to bid 100 euros for the chance to secure the original Picasso.

A total of 50,000 tickets are for sale on 1picasso100euros.com for the chance to win ‘Man with Opera Hat’, painted with gouache on paper in 1914.

The painting bears the artist’s signature in the upper right hand corner, and has been authenticated by Picasso’s daughter and son, Maya Picasso and Claude Ruiz-Picasso.

All proceeds from the auction in association with Sotheby's Paris will be given to a charity working to save the ancient city of Tyre in southern Lebanon.

Olivier Picasso hopes the money raised will fund an artisans’ village and cultural institute to support economic development and preservation projects in the UNESCO-listed city.

The painting was acquired by the International Association to Save Tyre with the help of a “very generous” anonymous donor, who purchased the work from a New York gallery.

Olivier Picasso said the work is “beautiful and perfectly executed” and said he thought his grandfather would approve of the auction.

“My grandfather loved to be a pioneer in everything, from his personal life, his sentimental life, to his work at the atelier. I know that he would have said yes to this. I feel like continuing the process for him,” he told the Washington Post.

He added the painting reflects the inspiration Picasso had two years before he designed the set and costumes for the 1916 surrealist show Parade, his collaboration with the French writer Jean Cocteau and the Russian ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev.

Art lovers and collectors have until 18 December to place their bids in the ‘1 Picasso for 100 euros’ auction.