Mariam Abdel Aleem (1930–2010) was an Egyptian printmaker, painter and educator who helped redefine the possibilities of printmaking in modern Egyptian art. Across five decades, she treated print as an experimental medium in its own right, continually altering its techniques and visual structures as her work moved from social and political observation towards increasingly symbolic and contemplative forms. Experimentation was fundamental to Abdel Aleem’s practice. Working across woodcut, linocut, lithography, intaglio, silkscreen and photographic processes, she combined and adapted techniques rather than remaining within the conventions of a single method. This technical freedom accompanied a broader transformation in her work. The figures and public subjects of her earlier prints gradually gave way to compositions shaped by Arabic calligraphy, Islamic visual traditions and Sufi thought, where letters and signs could be read at once as language, image and abstract form. Printmaking became, in her hands, a means of moving between the material and the metaphysical. Born in Alexandria, Abdel Aleem graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in 1954 and received an MFA in graphic printing from the University of Southern California in 1957, later completing a PhD at Helwan University and further studies at Pratt Institute in New York. She began teaching printmaking at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Alexandria in 1958, later becoming Head of Printmaking and Professor, and played a formative role in establishing the discipline within Egyptian art education. Her work was exhibited extensively in Egypt and internationally, including at the Venice Biennale in 1964.