From 1987 to 1990, Schovánek attended Grant McEwan University in Edmonton, Canada, and in 1990 he received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Alberta, Edmonton. After completing his senior studio at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, he returned to Prague in 1992 and has been working as an artist and curator in Berlin since 1993.
In 1998, Marek Schovánek founded MANIFEST International – Foundation for Sustainable Art and Culture. In the following years, he was internationally active as a curator. Here he promoted the cultural exchange between East and West.

In 1999, he opened the first noncommercial gallery in the former socialist Prague, “Gallery No D”, with the exhibition “The Last Underground”. In 1999, he presented the interactive exhibition with performance character “1999 – Beyond Art” at MANES Gallery of Modern Art Prague.

In 2000, he presented a retrospective of international young art in Berlin. The project “INTERZONE -Recycling the Future” showed a variety of trends in the fields of fine arts, literature, music, dance, performance and film for a month.

In 2001, he was invited to present international art from Berlin in Japan for “Energy Field – 1st Biennial for Art and Culture Biwako Hall”. In 2005, he curated the German contribution to the 1st Biennial of Contemporary Art at the National Gallery in Prague, which was rated by Richard Vine in the magazine “Art in America” ​​as one of the best contributions to contemporary art of the year 2005.