Wu Biduan (1926) was born in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province. He is of Hui ethnicity. From 1939 till 1945, he studied art in Chongqing and in 1946, he enrolled in the Fine Arts Department of the North China Associated University in the Jin-Cha-Ji Liberated Area. Following the People's Liberation Army, he reached Tianjin in 1948, where he worked in the Army-administered Municipal Culture and Education Section. At the time, he was also editor of the Tianjin Illustrated [天津画报]. Although he started teaching at the Central Art Academy in 1950, he joined the People's Volunteers' campaign into North Korea as a war correspondent, drawing hundreds of sketches of war activities. In 1956, he went to the Soviet Union, where he studied print making at the Ilya Repin State Academic Institute of Fine Arts, Sculpture and Architecture, St. Petersburg. After his return in 1959, he went back to the Central Art Academy, attaining the rank of professor. He retired in 1988.

Wu is mainly known for his wood block prints, some of which have been awarded prizes and/or have been included in national collections.