Kuo Hsueh-hu was born in Dadaocheng, Taipei, in 1908. He never studied abroad. He learned traditional ink painting from Tsai Hsueh-hsi, a Dadaocheng painter, and taught himself the rest by copying and sketching.

At the first Taiten in 1927, aged nineteen, he was accepted in the Eastern-style section alongside Chen Chin and Lin Yu-shan — the "Three Youths of the Taiten," and the only one of the three who had never left Taiwan. The next year Near Yuanshan won a special prize: the fields and woods around Yuanshan filled in stroke by stroke, so dense there is almost no empty space.

South Street, Dadaocheng, of 1930 shows the Ghost Festival on the street: arcades, signboards, crowds, lanterns, a whole street's commotion packed into one picture. It is often used to show what Taipei's streets looked like under Japanese rule.

After the war he helped organise the provincial art exhibition in Taiwan. In the 1960s he moved to Japan and later settled in San Francisco, where he died in 2012, aged 104.