Win a £1million Picasso for an £80 ticket – painter’s family urge punters to try their luck
BECOMING an artist was the gamble of a lifetime for Pablo Picasso, who in his early days of poverty and obscurity was forced to burn his own paintings just to stay warm.
But the Spanish genius rose to be the toast of the Parisian art world, harnessing his talent and international fame to aid the oppressed.
His family are now calling on the British people to also take a risk and, with their famed love of a flutter, gamble on the chance to win one of the great painter’s £1million works for the cost of a raffle ticket.
The Cubist pioneer’s descendants hope a Picasso could hang in a UK living room following a prize draw which seeks to raise almost £20million for charity this Christmas.
Anyone who can front the cost of a £80 (€100) ticket could win a signed painting donated for the draw, and Picasso’s family are counting on the UK to show solidarity with the painter and indulge in a bet.
“People are able to spend one million, ten million, or one hundred million,” the artist’s grandson Olivier Picasso told The SundayTelegraph. “It’s the price of an emotion. It’s really something that you can feel when you are facing an artwork, in a museum or an art gallery. But this time maybe it’s a chance to have it in your living room.”
The Frenchman urged British art lovers to try their hand: “Gambling is your national sport.”
Nature Morte
The vast canvas of Guernica was once toured around the world to highlight an atrocity in the Spanish Civil War, as Picasso belatedly politicised his genius to help others.
It is hoped that his paintings can again be put to use outside elegant galleries, this time for the impoverished communities of Africa.
A 1921 work titled Nature Morte, turing an obscured newspaper, been selected for this task. The painting, valued at £1million, will be the prize for the charity draw, which anyone can enter. Proceeds will be invested in securing clean water.
“My grandfather was very concerned about helping people,” said his grandson, the child of the painter’s daughter Maya. “He was very poor when he left Spain to come to Paris. He was obliged to burn some paintings just to put something in the fireplace.
“I think he would have been very happy. I hope he would have been proud.”
The “1 Picasso for 100 Euros” project is set to become an annual event, which inverts the soaring prices of the painter’s work, making them accessible, and wedded to charity.
“I think it’s quite revolutionary,” organiser Peri Cochin said in the Picasso Museum in Paris, where the prize painting currently hangs.
It is hoped that the 200,000 tickets will be sold to generate almost £20million for Care to help 200,000 people in Cameroon, Madagascar and Morocco.
The draw will take place at Christie’s in Paris on Jan 6. Entrants for the draw can apply online at 1picasso100euros.com.