Fritz Stehwien was born in 1914 a small town near Tangermande, Germany. Although a pacifist, Stehwien was drafted into the military and continued to create art throughout his service, painting and sketching the landscapes he saw and the people he met. After a tumultuous period during and after the war, he arrived in the city of Halle, where he enrolled in the Burg Giebichenstein school of art. Stehwien escaped with his wife and their four children to West Germany in 1958, and emigrated to Canada in 1968. Fritz Stehwien died in 2008, in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.