Adolf Breetvelt was born in Delft in 1892 and died in Amsterdam in 1975.
He attended the academy in The Hague. Before the war he was an artist in the former Netherlands East Indies. He was on friendly terms with Piet Ouborg.
He worked in a surrealistic style. After the war, Breetvelt came back to the Netherlands, and produced his first abstract works. Initially surrealistic in nature with a dash of geometry, Breetveld later became increasingly more an abstract expressionist. From 1951 he also produced sculptures in wood and metal.
He had a solo exhibition in Fodor in Amsterdam in 1963.