Native of Yixing, Jiangsu, Wu Guanzhong began studying painting in 1936 at the Hangzhou Academy of Art under Pan Tianshou and Lin Fengmian. After his graduation in 1942, he received a teaching position at the Ministry of Education. He then travelled to France and during the next four years studied oil painting under Professor J.M. Souverable at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts and at the A. L'Hote and O'Frieze Studios. He also studied art history at the Ecole du Louvre. After returning to China from France in 1950, Wu Guanzhong taught at the Central Academy of Fine Art, Qinghua University and in the art department of the Beijing Normal Academy. Currently, he is a professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts and Crafts.

Wu has painted in oil since 1950, even during the Cultural Revolution. His international fame is evidenced by several exhibitions of both his traditional and oil paintings; the 1989-1990 Chinese Culture Foundation of San Fransisco's Wu Guanzhong: A Contemporary Chinese Artist and Wu Guanzhong, A Twentieth-Century Chinese Painter, held at the British Museum in London, in 1992.