Maarten Krabbé is the son of painter Hendrik Maarten Krabbé (1868-1931) and singer Miep Rust (1874-1956). His sisters were Henny Eskens-Krabbé (a resistance heroine during the Second World War) and Lies van Buren-Krabbé.
Krabbé grew up in Het Gooi, where he enjoyed nature intensely, which later became visible in his work. He moved to Bussum in 1913 and to Zandvoort in 1922.
After three years at the HBS in Haarlem, his father allowed him to become a painter, after which he studied at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam from 1926 to 1930.
He married Margreet Reiss, a writer and translator. They had two sons: Tim Krabbé (chess player and author) and Jeroen Krabbé (actor, director, and painter). They divorced in the mid-fifties, and in 1959 he remarried Helena Verschuur. They had one son, Mirko Krabbé (designer and painter).
In his youth, Krabbé studied works such as Petrus Camper’s ‘Gelaatsboek’ (1780) and found inspiration as a painter in Cubism, children’s drawings, René Gockinga (1893-1962), and Aubrey Beardsley.
At a young age, he discovered experimentation with ‘automatic drawing’—finding shapes within accidental lines. He was also very sensitive to the written word and maintained correspondence with Frederik van Eeden, Dulac, Dr. Paul Gachet (Vincent van Gogh’s physician), Carmiggelt, and fellow painter Melle. Zandvoorts Museum has a work of art by Maarten Krabbé in its collection. It is a portrait of Mr. Bol.
