Pawel Kontny was born in Silesia in 1926 and aspired to be an artist, but his father was against it. Instead, he studied architecture at Breslau Polish University, which greatly influenced his later career as an artist.

A painter of subjects from many parts of the world, Pawel Kontny began with wartime sketches and changed to a technique combining abstraction and realism.
He was born in Laurahuette, Silesia, the son of a wealthy pastry shop owner. He studied architecture, but was interrupted by World War II. Traveling in many countries as a soldier, he sketched various landscapes but in 1945, he was captured and held as a prisoner of war in Italy.

His studies were interrupted by WWII when he was drafted by the German Army. As a member of the 62nd Silesian Infantry division, he fought in many battles on the Eastern Front. Despite the hardships, he still possessed the spirit of an artist, and recorded his impressions of the harsh landscapes he encountered on paper bags and butcher paper. He was captured by a British army unit in Italy in the final months of the war. Even under these circumstances, his artistic talents prevailed; in the prisoner-of-war camp, the colonel in charge sent him with an armed guard to sketch places of interest.
After the war, he continued his architectural studies at the Union of Nuremberg Architects and helped design buildings to replace those destroyed during the war. He also continued to paint, and his first exhibition as an artist was in 1949 at the Amerika Haus near Nuremberg. He also met and married his wife, Irmgard, who was a dancer with the Nuremburg Opera Theater. His work was shown in galleries in Germany, Switzerland, Japan and in several prestigious venues throughout the United States.

Kontny moved to Denver, Colorado in 1962 and began painting the landscapes of the American West and Southwest. He perfected the innovative technique of mixing oil paint with marble dust, which gave his paintings unique texture and depth. His Southwest landscape paintings are almost structural in style; the scene literally "builds itself" on the canvas or masonite, reflecting Kontny's strong background in architecture. His work is included in many museum and corporate collections. Kontny died in the year 2000 at the age of 74.