In 1935, Wu left technical college and joined the Hangzhou art college where he studied Chinese and western painting and became a fan of Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cezanne. In 1938, he adopted the pen name "Tu", which he uses on all his paintings to indicate a great intensity of character, half happy and half sad life and creations loaded with meaning.

In 1946, four years after graduation and further study about Chinese literature, French and history, Wu was offered a place at the Ecole National Superieure Des Beaux-arts in Paris on a government scholarship where he mainly studied modern art. During his time in Paris, Wu formed his own ideas about modern western art. He appreciated its novel forms, acute perceptions of the world, diverse techniques of expression and its popular use of abstract form.

Wu returned to China in the summer of 1950 and dedicated his whole life to art in his home country. He encouraged his students at the Central Academy of Art in Beijing to draw on both western and Chinese art to create their style. Years later, he taught at the Architecture Department of Tsinghua University. Although he taught traditional watercolor painting, Wu began to combine western watercolors and Chinese ink painting techniques. At the beginning of the 1980's, Wu painted The Great Wall for Beijing's Xiangshan Hotel. The painting exemplified an obvious change in his style from representation to semi- abstraction. Traditionally the Great Wall was painted as a mountain scene, like thin lacework put on the mountain peaks. But Wu didn't like this formula. In his opinion the Great Wall turns, winds and twists. He stuck to his own visual feeling and painted a moving picture of the Great Wall. "At that time, many people thought I had gone too far," he said, " even myself are not satisfied with it for it is immature. But it is the first step on my new way."