LONDON.- Simon de Pury announces today his return to the auction market with the formation of a new business: de Pury. In partnership with Mallett, the renowned international gallery business, and with backing from Klaus Hommels, one of the world’s most successful investors in Internet businesses, the venture will stage a series of single owner auctions over a new online platform, alongside expertly curated physical exhibitions in both London and New York.

The venture’s first auction will be a major sale of approximately 400 selections from LAC (the Lambert Art Collection) to take place both in person in London and online, including tablet and mobile, on Monday 12th October 2015. The sale, to be prefigured by a physical exhibition to be staged by French designer Jacques Grange, marks Simon de Pury’s first commercial auction since leaving Phillips de Pury in 2012 and his first move into the digital sphere.

Titled A Visual Odyssey: Selections from LAC (the Lambert Art Collection), the October auction will bring to market a selection of contemporary art and modern design works juxtaposed with antique fine furniture and objets d’art spanning the 18th and 19th centuries. This selection is drawn by Baroness Lambert, responsible for LAC, and follows Veronica’s Revenge, the highly successful sale in 2004 of contemporary photographs from LAC executed by Simon de Pury, which set numerous records.

The sale will present a discourse on the very notion of taste, inviting buyers to explore new and unexpected strategies that lie behind the ways we choose what we surround ourselves with. In keeping with current trends to discover new relationships across the breadth of art history, Jacques Grange, a long-standing friend of Baroness Lambert, together with Pierre Passebon, will present a uniquely playful and liberating mise-en-scene that mixes haphazard objects, paintings, photographs and furniture: a Christopher Wool painting next to Chinese furniture, 1930’s design alongside a Richard Prince joke painting and contemporary art works mixed in with some of the most important pieces of 18th Century French furniture.

Grange’s exhibition will be on show two weeks before the auction at Ely House, Mallett’s Dover Street headquarters and formerly the Bishop of Ely’s London seat before becoming home to the Albemarle club for much of the 20th Century, and will feature a series of talks in which scholars, experts and editors will discuss various themes arising from the sale, such as the changing notion of taste and the role of collecting in today’s art world.

The online user journey and visual experience will match Simon de Pury’s social media clout (almost 130,000 followers on Instagram) and will sit alongside an extremely nimble and fast back of house operation. A digital-only catalogue will offer viewers rich content, interviews, opinion and crystal clear photography and video, while the auction itself will use embedded video streaming instead of the ubiquitous low res camera quality available on most other bidding platforms. de Pury plans to pass on the cost savings from online-only catalogues by charging a discounted buyer’s premium of only 15% up to $2m and 12% thereafter, as against the market benchmarks of 25% and 12%.

The formation of de Pury offers the market a rare twinning of Simon de Pury’s exceptional access, knowledge and experience with Mallet’s extensive logistical and technological expertise, recently emboldened following the gallery’s 2014 acquisition by rapidly expanding Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions, the UK’s fourth largest auction business.

Simon de Pury comments, “The Internet represents the most important challenge in the art market right now. Digital is the next frontier and this exciting venture will set a new standard. We have exactly the right mix of talents to bring to the market something fresh and different that is in tune with contemporary culture.”