Background
Simon de Pury was born in Basel in 1951, and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Tokyo in the 1970s.
Simon de Pury was born in Basel in 1951, and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Tokyo in the 1970s.
De Pury began his art career in the early 1970s when he studied Japanese painting techniques at the Tokyo Academy of Arts.
De Pury is often called "the Mick Jagger of art auctions" for his masterful, exciting style of auctioneering and is perhaps the world"s best known art auctioneer. In recent years he has also appeared in several television programs and films, most notably the Bravo network reality series Work of Art: The Next Great Artist, the first season of which premiered in June 2010. His book The Auctioneer: Adventures in the Art Trade will be published in Spring 2016.
He began his auctioning career in Switzerland working for the Swiss auction houses Bern Auctioneers and Kornfeld and Klipstein.
After studying at the Sotheby"s Institute, de Pury began working for the Sotheby"s auction house in 1974 at their London and Monte Carlo offices, and later opened their new Geneva branch in his native Switzerland. From 1979-1986 he was the curator of the famous Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection and organized numerous art exhibitions at the Villa Favorita in Lugano, Switzerland.
In 1986, he was appointed chairman of Sotheby"s Switzerland and later chairman of Sotheby"s Europe. In 1997, de Pury left Sotheby"s to start his own auction house with Daniella Luxembourg, called De Pury and Luxemburg Artist
In 2001 this company merged with Philips Auctioneers, another art auctioning company, to give the company its current name of Phillips de Pury & Company, of which he is chairman and chief auctioneer.
In October 2008 a majority stake in the company was sold to the Russian luxury retailer The Mercury Group.
