Petr Pavlík was born on January 31, 1945, in Prague, where he still lives and works today. He is a member of the 12/15 Better Late Than Never collective. Between 1968 and 1973, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, training in the studios of František Jiroudek and Arnošt Paderlík.

He later developed a substantial teaching career: from 1999 to 2003 he worked as an assistant in the sculpture studio of Jiří Beránek at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. From 2004 to 2024, he was affiliated with the Department of Scenography at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, where he was appointed associate professor in 2012.

In 1993, Pavlík interrupted his artistic practice to focus on theoretical, critical, and literary work. During this period, he published articles in journals and newspapers such as Ateliér, Lidové noviny, Prager Zeitung, Literární noviny, Host, and Mladý svět. In 1997, the Central European Gallery and Publishing House published Art and life in the Czech lands, or The art of living in the Czech lands, a collection of his theoretical and critical essays.

Throughout his career, Pavlík has also delivered lectures at institutions including the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Brno University of Technology, the Faculty of Arts at Charles University in Prague, the Glasgow School of Art, the University of Art and Design in Halle, and the Aleš South Bohemian Gallery, among others.