The painting Late Afternoon with Giorgio de Chirico is a highly significant work in Matal’s oeuvre, one that originates from the start of the artist’s association with Group 42. The red-haired figure that is virtually bereft of physicality gazes fixedly at a late-afternoon cityscape. The metaphysical existence of the objects in the room —— the umbrella and the wash basin —— contrasts with the empty but harmonious interior. The white-robed figure is fascinated with the city and its energy. It gazes into the future and balances on the thin border between reality and sweet dreaming. In this painting Bohumír Matal astonishingly foreshadows his work of the late 1940s as well as summing up the essence of Group 42 as a whole.