The raffle, which caps ticket sales at 120,000, could generate up to €12 million if all tickets are sold. From the proceeds, €1 million will be paid to the Opera Gallery, an international art dealership that owns the painting. The remaining funds will go to the Alzheimer's Research Foundation, based in one of Paris's leading public hospitals. It is not known how many tickets have been sold so far, nor the exact market value of Tête de Femme.
Organisers say two previous Picasso raffles raised more than €10 million for charitable causes. In the inaugural '1 Picasso for €100' raffle in 2013, a fire-sprinkler worker in Pennsylvania won Man in the Opera Hat, a cubist work painted by Picasso in 1914. A second Picasso, the oil-on-canvas Nature Morte, was raffled off in 2020 and went to an accountant in Italy whose son had bought her the ticket as a Christmas present. The specific cultural work in Lebanon and water and hygiene programmes in Africa funded by these raffles have not been detailed.
Nature Morte, painted in 1921, was bought for the 2020 raffle from the billionaire art collector David Nahmad. Picasso died in 1973.
Tête de Femme will be on view at Christie's auction house in Paris from Monday and the draw will be held there at 6pm local time on Tuesday. The raffle organisers' online sales platform indicates that tickets are priced at €100 each, equivalent to approximately £87. The painting is a gouache-on-paper work titled Tête de Femme (Head of a Woman).