Olga Karlíková was an artist who graduated from the Prague College of Applied Arts after the war, where she studied with Antonín Strnadela and she studied textiels with Antonín Kybal, then worked as a textile designer in the state-owned Institute of Housing and Clothing Culture. She devoted herself to the abstract appearance of nature and was also interested in acoustics; she is best known for her works on the singing of birds and whales.
After 1977, when she signed Charter 77, she became an undesirable artist and her works disappeared from the public sphere. Karlikova was one of the first signatories to Charter 77. She found it through her niece, architect Helena Bukovanská. As she said in an interview with Marcela Pánková in 1995, "She was terribly relieved after the signing because she had been embarrassed by lying and resentment since childhood." (Fine Arts 3-4, 95) It was not until 1989 that she began to exhibit again and her work gained critical attention. She was exceptionally successful in exhibiting her work at the Monastery in Doksany in the 1980s, which was prepared by Ludvík Hlaváček.
Olga Karlíková is considered to be the first conceptual artist in Czechia.