Born in Nantong, Zheijiang province, China, in 1949, Wang Xu grew up in Beijing. After some years in Inner Mongolia during the Cultural Revolution, he returned to Beijing to work as an art designer and in 1981 enrolled in a teacher training course at the Fine Art Department at the Central Minorities Academy, where he specialised in traditional Chinese painting. In 1987 he was appointed to work in the Beijing Art Museum. He relocated to Sydney in 1989, and while there has studied art at the College of Fine Art at the University of New South Wales, where he obtained his MA in 2002. Wang has departed from painting in the traditional Chinese style he studied in China. The urban scenes of Sydney fascinate him - for him, the streets, buildings, cars and the Sydney Harbour Bridge vibrate with energy, and this has led him to change to painting with oils on canvas. The bold strokes and primary colours of Wang Xu's painting style reflect the raw energy and motion that he perceives in his new Australian environment.