Bohumir Matal (1922-1988) - Vis van de dag

A beautiful large painting by the Czech painter Bohumir Matal. The work is oil on canvas and is signed on the back with "B. Matal" 1975 with the title "Ryba dne" which, translated freely, means "fish of the day." Provenance: Willem van Albeslo collection.

Bohumír Matal (13 February 1922, Brno – 7 July 1988, Prudká in Doubravník) was a Czech painter and one of the youngest members of Group 42. He was an important figure in post-war painting of the 20th century in Brno.

Bohumír Matal studied from 1937 to 1941 at the School of Arts and Crafts in Brno (under the direction of Prof. E. Hrbek and František Václav Süsser). In 1941 he was arrested for antifascist activities and sent to the Lohbruck labor camp in Germany. There he worked in a chain factory. Although he could no longer paint, he wrote letters to his family, which he enriched with illustrations. During his stay in the labor camp he wrote more than 200 letters with black-and-white pencil drawings.

In 1945 he returned from Germany in poor health.
After his recovery, he began painting again.
After an exhibition with other young painters in Paris in 1946 he had his own exhibition.
His typical themes were people, the city, civilization and industrialization – cement plants, paper mills, and so on.
His first paintings showed subjects such as airships, harbors and streets in the rain; gradually his work became connected with the program of Group 42.

After the political changes in 1948, Bohumír Matal locked himself away in his studio and continued the style of Group 42. He painted portraits and his famous paintings 'The Cyclist' from 1952 and 1954. In the first half of the 1950s, the political situation changed, and Bohumír Matal, together with Vladislav Vaculka and Vladimír Vašíček, founded the Group Brno 57.

In the sixties, experiments and subtractivity appeared in Matals' work. In addition to painting, he also worked on set design. After 1968 he left Brno and moved to Prudká near Doubravník, where he bought a windmill and converted it into a studio. He died there after a long illness on July 7, 1988.