Abstract. The present status of visualization on the grid is not really satisfying. In contrast to other grid services, such as batch processing, data transfer, and resource scheduling, visualization is still utilized in the traditional point-topoint fashion, with applications integrating visualization as subroutine calls or even post-mortem. This situation is addressed by the Grid Visualization Kernel GVK1, which proposes a fully grid-enabled approach to scientific visualization. The infrastructure of GVK features a portal for arbitrary simulation servers and visualization clients, while the actual processing of the visualization pipeline is transparently performed on the available grid resources.