As one of the most prominent painters of Egypt’s modern period, Hamed Nada touched on symbolism, superstition, daily life and the world of the djinn through stylised figuration. Nada was influenced by his religious upbringing and experience of living in the Sayyida Zeinab district of Cairo. While working as an illustrator for the seminal Egyptian writer Taha Hussein, Nada attended Cairo’s School of Fine Arts. A student of the renowned painter and teacher Hussein Youssef Amin, who rejected the school's traditional curriculum, Nada joined other Egyptian artists including Abdel Hadi el-Gazzar, Samir Rafi and Kamal Youssef to form the Group of Contemporary Art. In the 1950s, Nada began to focus on the daily plight of the Egyptian working class, later moving towards more political subjects in his work. In 1960, Nada studied mural painting at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid and became head of the painting department at Cairo University in 1977.