Dutch Modernist painter and printmaker Andre van der Vossen was born in Haarlem in 1893. He studied at the Haarlem Arts and Crafts School, and following graduation he secured a job at the Johan Enschede en Zonen graphics firm where he worked as a typographer. Indeed, much of his early career was spent focusing on graphic arts, producing posters, book illustrations, and other highly stylized works from woodcut and lithographic mediums. In 1924 he took a commission designing stamps for the postal service.

In 1929 he began to explore painting and took an interest in Abstract Expressionism. He would later find inspiration in the works of Kandinksy, whose own art borrowed from the two aesthetics that inspired Vossen: geometric balance, and the studied chaos of the abstract. He was an early member of the Society for the Advancement of Graphic Arts in the 1920s, and later he was instrumental in founding the Vrij Beelden and Creatie artists' collectives of the Netherlands. Van der Vossen taught at the Dienst Esthetische Vormgeving (Aesthetic Design Service) and he exhibited at the Salon des Realities Nouvelles in Paris. 

In the 1950s van der Vossen abruptly changed course and destroyed what works of his he still had in his possession. From there on out, his work mostly returned to figuration. 

He died in Bloemendaal in 1963.