Võ Xưởng was born as Vũ Hữu Xưởng on 8 December 1942 in Hải Dương province in northern Vietnam.

During his youth in the 1960s, he worked for a newspaper in the Northern port and industrial city of Hải Phòng as a printing technician. He never studied art but had a talent for it. He joined the People’s Army of Vietnam as a regular soldier in Division 7 and was moved to the south of Vietnam during the wartime. Expecting only to be a soldier, he brought no art supplies with him, though once in the south, he was able to send a farmer to purchase some materials for him. All of Võ Xưởng’s wartime art works were made out of personal interest in his “leisure time”. Although not an official artist, his superiors transferred him to the political unit of the division’s regional headquarters and his commanders sent him to many different units in his divisional area. Small exhibitions of his art works were made to improve soldiers’ morale.

After the end of the war, he finally enrolled in art school, and graduated from Ho Chi Minh City Fine Art University in 1981.