Wu painted various aspects of China, including its architecture, plants, animals, people, as well as many of its landscapes and waterscapes, in a style reminiscent of the impressionist painters of the early 1900s.

[4] Against his father’s wishes, in 1936 he transferred to the art academy, studying both Chinese and Western painting under Pan Tianshou (1897–1971), Fang Ganmin (1906–1984) and Li Chaoshi (1893-1971).

In 1937 the Sino-Japanese War began and the campus had to pick up and relocate in order to get out of the way of the invading Japanese army.

After Wu graduated he continued to hone his craft and studied with some of his old colleagues from school, like Zhu Dequn, Li Lincan and Zheng Wei.

1947 traveled to Paris to study at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts on the government scholarship.

He took great interest in the modern art of France, especially Post-Impressionists such as van Gogh, Gauguin and Cézanne.

He also identified with the hardships that Gauguin felt when he left Paris for a South Pacific island in order to find his own personal ideal.

Wu's trip to France helped him grasp the idea of form and the basic meaning of art.

In 1970, at the age of 51, he and his wife were separated and assigned to almost 3 years of hard labor in the countryside as part of the Communist Party's vast re-education program.

It seems that only after we have seen the Japanese painter Higashiyama Kai’s explorations have we come to have a clear understanding about the problems of uniting the East and West.” [4] Wu has written many other articles based on his version of form and how it applies to modernism.

Next he spent a great deal of time in the studio trying to figure out the best way to show the power of the form of the object.

[6] It is a painting that captures both the static form of traditional Jiangnan architecture and the motion of two swallows as they fly toward a tree.

For example, the front walls of the houses are horizontally placed white rectangles with simple black and gray lines to depict the edges and rooftop of each building.

Doorways were painted in the same minimalistic manner, yet the contrast between the darkness inside the building with the lighter door frame is prominent enough to create a sense of depth.

Wu’s attention to perspective and depth in Twin Swallow is a factor that distinguishes himself from many other traditional guohua painters.

Similarly, Wu felt obligated to pass on the knowledge that he had gained in France to the younger generations in China in order to promote the idea of a synthesis among Western and traditional Chinese art.

He paid careful attention to the ups and downs, concave and convex, caverns and peaks, and sizes of the rocks.

Although the structure of the rockery is hardly identifiable in this painting, this sense of ambiguity further encourages viewers to use their imagination and look beyond what is presented in front of their eyes.

[11] Wu Guanzhong has had solo exhibitions in major art galleries and museums around the world, including China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, Taipei, Korea, France, England and the USA.

In 2024, the Hong Kong Museum of Art ran a special exhibition titled "Wu Guanzhong: Between Black and White".[13].

“Through painting landscapes I have grown to love my motherland even more and wish to be forever intoxicated in her embrace.” [4] This particular quote gives us deeper insight to the deep appreciation for China and the land that Wu Guanzhong had.

Whether the feelings and perceptions of modern Chinese can find resonance in the West depends on the emotions, if they are true or false.

"So often there is conflict between them, and this is my greatest sorrow....Whatever I have written is to try to help our own people to understand and to get rid of their fear and suspicion of abstraction in Western art.

But even when I talked this away, recently there were lots of argument and objections.” [4] This specific quote shows how difficult it was in China to integrate abstract Western art as a result of their fears and how this impedes Wu Guanzhong's ability to freely discuss it.

“In searching for all the marvelous peaks to make sketches, for thirty years during winter, summer, spring, and autumn, I carried on my back the heavy painting equipment and set foot in the river towns, mountain villages, thick forests, and snowy peaks – from the farthest corner of the Eastern Sea to the border towns of Tibet, from the ruins of ancient Greek Gaochang (in Xinjiang) to the isles of seagulls, I stayed in truck stops, courtyards of fishermen’s homes, factory buildings, and broken temples....In all of these I trained myself to develop endurance.” [4] We see through this quote Wu Guanzhong's struggles on his journey of becoming a landscape painter and how this resulted in him becoming stronger.