Said Hedaya

Said Hedaya (b. 1937, Alexandria, Egypt; d. 2017) was a printmaker who made woodcuts, etchings and colour intaglio prints. He grew up in Sidi Bishr, Alexandria, and his prints draw on the sea, the Sidi Gaber mawlid, folk tales and popular customs. Horses, fish and mermaids recur, and a bird appears in almost every print. He taught printmaking at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Alexandria, from 1964.

Hedaya entered the Faculty in 1958 and graduated from its printed design department in 1963. His graduation project, Traditions and Popular Customs, was a series of colour relief prints from woodblocks. A study mission took him to Italy in 1972; he completed a doctorate in graphic art in Urbino in 1978. His early work recorded the daily life of working people; later work turned to expressionism, then symbolism. One Thousand and One Nights (1978) is a colour woodcut, The Rain (1984) a metal intaglio print, and Mermaid (2004) a woodcut. He was a founding member of a group of contemporary Egyptian printmakers and headed the printed design department from 1989 to 1997.

In Italy he held solo exhibitions at the Egyptian Academy in Rome (1976) and Michelangelo Hall in Florence (1977). In Egypt he had solo shows at the Mahmoud Said Museum (1980) and the Museum of Fine Arts, Alexandria (1984). He showed at the Ljubljana International Biennial of Graphic Arts (1987, 1989) and the Havana Biennial (1991). He won a prize at the second Egypt International Triennale of Graphic Art in 1996. The Fine Arts Sector honoured him at the thirty-ninth General Exhibition of Fine Arts in 2017. His work is in the Museum of Egyptian Modern Art, Cairo, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Alexandria. The Sector organised his retrospective at the Gezira Art Center, Cairo, in 2026.