In 1926, after learning the French language at a town outside Paris for six months, Fang was accepted into an art school in Lyon where he took "Paster Casts" and "Future drawing" classes.

In 1927, Fang attended École des Beaux-Arts de Paris and joined Jean-Paul Laurens' studio, together with Yan Wenliang.

Apart from taking drawing lessons at the studio, he was also a frequent visitor of galleries and museums and developed a strong interest in post-impressionism.

[6] In or around 1930, Fang Ganmin, along with artists such as Xu Shaozeng, Guo Guni, Li Jingfa and Zhu Yingpeng, founded the Changfeng Society for the Study of Western Paintings.

[8] During the Cultural Revolution, Fang, branded an anti-revoluntary for his modernist artistic style, was paraded around the National Academy of Art in Hangzhou, ink and paint poured over him as students beat and denounced him.

They are exercises in the Cubist manner, and give to their subject, both nudes, the geometrical and sculptural, but not the fragmented, effect of a picture by Braque.