A monumental Ben Nicholson painting, which highlighted the Tate exhibition in 1964 entitled Painting and Sculpture of a Decade 54-64, comes up at Sotheby’s sale of Modern and Post-War British Art in London on July 11. Oct 61 (Mycenae-axe-blue) is on the scale of the artist’s Festival of Brtain’s commission. It measures four and a half metres across and is from the years Nicholson spent in Switzerland. Offered for sale for the fist time since it was purchased in New York in 1966 it is estimated at £1-1.5 million.