Born in 1918, when Korea was under Japanese colonial rule, Chang Ucchin studied western art at Tokyo's Imperial School of Art. He became a professor of fine arts at Seoul National University in 1954, but resigned to paint full-time from 1960.

Chang Ucchin is one of the representatives of modern Korean fine-art. He effects a unique way in painting routine objects familiar to all Koreans such as children, magpies, the sun, and the moon. In the midst of the current of Western Modernism, he developed his own style of painting in investigating and experimenting.

In addition to oil painting, he tried various formative practices such as marker pen drawing, Chinese ink painting, painting on pottery, silkscreen, copperplate print, and wood-block print. He depicted scenery surrounding him, his neighbors, and themes related to Buddhism, as if a child seeing them with their clear eyes.