FRAMED INCLUDED: HOW ABOUT A PICASSO DRAWING FOR $140?

A million-dollar drawing by Pablo Picasso was won by a 25-year-old art lover at an online charity raffle for just 140 bucks, about the price of the frame. Jeffrey Gonano, a project manager at a fire sprinkler firm, said he had been looking for a picture to hang on his living room wall when he read an article about “L’Homme au Gibus” (“Man with Opera Hat”), raffled by Sotheby’s in Paris. “I was looking for art and I thought I might as well.” His winning ticket was picked by computer and was one of the 50,000 put up for sale online to fundraise for an association working to preserve the ancient city of Tyre, Lebanon. The 1914 drawing is from the artist’s Cubist phase, and was bought from a New York gallery for slightly less than the million dollar Sotheby’s estimate. Despite the value of the piece, Gonano has vowed not to sell the artwork, at least for now. Really? I love art and would love to own a Picasso, but I’d make a copy of it, put it in the same frame and auction the original SO FAST.

Pabo Picasso, 1914, L’Homme au Gibus, drawing on paper