Guan Liang was born in 1900 in Fanyu, Guangdong province. At seventeen, he went to Japan to study art in Toyko. In 1922, he returned to China and taught in various schools including the Shanghai Fine Arts School and the Hangzhou National College of Art. In 1927, Guan Liang joined the Beifa War (the first revolutionary civil war against the imperialists and the northern warlords) and he was in charge of publicity and arts for the General Political Department of the Beifa Army. During the Resistance War against Japan, he took part in the Art and Culture Movement. Guan Liang held his first solo exhibition in Chengdu in 1940 and throughout the 1940's and 1950's was involved in many group exhibitions in China. In 1957, he was one of three Chinese artists chosen to exhibit at the Berlin Arts Institute and was sent to East Germany by the Chinese government for the opening. In the 1960's, Guan Liang settled in Shanghai, remaining there until his death in 1986. An important representative of the first generation of Chinese oil painters, he was a recognized educator. He was a council member of the Chinese Artists' Association, member of the Shanghai Literature and Art Union, vice chairman of the Chinese Artists' Association Shanghai Branch, director of the Art Research Office of Shanghai Jiaotong University, and a member of Shanghai Research Institute of Culture and History. In 1987, the Shanghai Art Museum held a memorial exhibition and seminar on the works of Guan Liang.