His sisters were Henny Eskens-Krabbé (who was a resistance fighter in World War II) and Lies van Buren-Krabbé.

In his youth Krabbé studied the Face Book (Gelatenboek) by Petrus Camper (1780) and found his inspiration as a painter in Cubism, children's drawings, René Gockinga (1893–1962) and Aubrey Beardsley.

As a more mature artist, one can see in his work how he explores styles and compositions of well-known colleagues in order to find out what makes them so special.

In the war years of 1940 -1945, the now famous series of etchings was created on the subject of Miguel de Cervantes' early 17th century novel Don Quixote.

After the war, these 18 etchings found their way to the Museo Casa Natal de Cervantes in Spain[2] and just before his death eight masterly oil paintings on the same subject went to the same museum.

They had two sons: Tim, a published author, cyclist and chess player; and Jeroen, a film actor, director and painter.

Filmmaker Louis van Gasteren used Maarten Krabbé's works on Don Quixote in 2008 and poet Frank Starik wrote a memorial poem.