PARIS (AFP).- A charity raffle for a Picasso painting worth more than one million euros ($1.1 million) has been postponed until March, the organisers said Monday.

The winner of the still-life by the Spanish master was meant to be drawn in Paris on Monday, but the organisers said not enough 100-euro tickets had so far been sold.

"The goal is to raise the maximum amount of money possible" to finance clean water projects for the charity CARE in Africa, said the organisers in a statement to AFP.

"The postponement has been approved by the Paris police and will now take place before the end of March," they added.

Anyone buying a ticket in the international draw had a one-in-200,000 chance of winning the canvass of a stylised glass of absinthe and a newspaper Picasso created in 1921.

The painting comes from the billionaire Lebanese-born collector David Nahmad, who has one of the biggest private collections of Picassos in the world.

He will get one million euros from the draw with the rest going to the charity.

Picasso Museum director Laurent Le Bon said the painting comes from a period when Picasso "synthesised the realist and cubist currents" of his work.

It is a painting "that makes people think and dream", he told AFP.

A 25-year-old Pittsburgh fire safety official, Jeffrey Gonano, won Picasso's "Man with Opera Hat" the last time a similar draw was organised six years ago.

The five million euros raised then went to help preserve the ancient city of Tyre in Lebanon.

The draw is being run through the 1picasso100euros.com website.


© Agence France-Presse