Josef Volvovič

Josef Volvovič, born in 1951, is a Czech conceptual artist, mathematician, philosopher, and educator. Alongside his artistic practice, he worked as a teacher of mathematics and civics and was engaged with phenomenological philosophy. His involvement with interdisciplinary cultural circles in Czechoslovakia during the 1970s and 1980s centered on experimental approaches to language, communication, and visual form. 

Working with early computer systems, Volvovič created computer graphics and conceptual works shaped through language, mathematics, repetition, and visual structure. He began collaborating with Jiří Hůla on computer generated images in the late 1970s using programming, random number systems, keyboard characters, and algorithmic procedures. He approached the computer as a tool for reorganizing words, symbols, and visual patterns through mathematical systems and chance operations. His work was closely connected to concrete poetry, conceptual art, and experimental publishing, often transforming written language into visual compositions shaped by serial systems and typographic arrangements.

Through his involvement with Galerie H and Atelier GH, Volvovič became part of a longstanding network of exhibitions, readings, discussions, and interdisciplinary gatherings bringing together visual art, literature, philosophy, and experimental forms of communication. In 1983, he and Jiří Hůla presented computer graphics in the exhibition Computer Graphics (Počítačová grafika), one of the documented early exhibitions dedicated to experimental computer art in Czechoslovakia. Today, his work appears in research and archival studies focused on Czech conceptual art, visual poetry, artist books, and alternative exhibition culture.