A sculptor and medallist whose work includes both commissions from the state based on socialist realism and expressive sculptures with women as their central theme.

Shortly after his birth, his family moved to Prague, where his father Filip was editor-in-chief of Rudé právo (the Communist Party newspaper) and a senator for the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. Viktor Dobrovolný graduated from secondary school in Prague’s Žižkov district (1920–1924) and then, between 1924 and 1928, studied lettering, ornamentation, sandblasting and glass etching at J. Palme’s industrial arts workshop. From 1927 to 1934, he studied at the School of Applied Arts in Prague under the sculptor, glyptician and glass artist Josef Drahoňovský. From the 1920s onwards, he published illustrations and caricatures in the magazines Kronika, Oheň, and Der Simpl.

During World War II, he was imprisoned in the Mauthausen and Dachau concentration camps for his political views.

In 1945, he joined the Máj publishing house as a technical editor, where he prepared materials for the printers. At the turn of the 1950s, the then almost forty-year-old Dobrovolný undertook study trips to England, France, Poland, and the Soviet Union. He drew particular inspiration from Pablo Picasso, Alexander Archipenko, Henry Moore and Max Ernst, and from Czech artists such as Jan Štursa.

His oeuvre consists primarily of sculpture, though he was also devoted to drawing, which invariably preceded the realization of a work in material form. After the war, as a committed communist, he gravitated toward socialist realism, particularly in his public commissions. In 1977, he created a pair of monumental bronze reliefs for Havlíčkův Brod, installed on a memorial to the victims of the first and second world wars.

In 1950, he became a member of the Union of Czechoslovak Fine Artists and in 1984 he was awarded the title of Meritorious Artist. He bequeathed his estate to Havlíčkova Borová, where it is now publicly displayed.