‘I was compelled to drive the blade into the canvas’: The artist Edita Schubert brandished her medical instrument like creatives handle a paintbrush.

The life of Edita Schubert was one of two distinct halves. Over a period spanning thirty years, the late Croatian artist held a position at the Anatomy Institute at the medical school of the University of Zagreb, carefully sketching dissected human bodies for textbooks for surgeons. Within her artistic workspace, she made art that resisted every attempt at categorisation – often using the very same tools.

“She was producing these really precise, technical illustrations which were used in anatomy guides,” says a curator of a new retrospective of Schubert’s work. “She was right in the middle of that practice … She was entirely comfortable in the dissection room.” Her illustrations of human anatomy, observes a arts scholar, are still featured in manuals for anatomy students in Croatia today.

The Intermingling of Dual Vocations

Having two professional lives was not uncommon for Yugoslav artists, who rarely had access to a commercial art market. However, the manner in which these spheres merged was unique. The scalpels she used to make clean incisions in cadavers became instruments for slicing canvas. Surgical tape designed for medical use secured her sliced creations. Glass vials usually meant for scientific specimens became vessels for her autobiography.

A Frustration That Cut Deep

In the early 1970s, Schubert was still creating within the limits of classic art. Her work included detailed, photorealistic compositions in oil and acrylic of sweets and tabletop items. However, discontent had been growing since her academy years. At Zagreb’s Academy of Fine Arts, she was required to depict nude figures. “I was compelled to stab the knife through the fabric, it truly frustrated me, that tight canvas where I was expected to express myself,” she confided in a researcher, one of the few people she ever granted an interview. “I thrust the blade into the painting in place of a brush.”

Where Anatomical Practice Meets Creation

That year, this desire became a concrete action. The artist created eleven sizable paintings. She painted each one a blue monochrome then using an anatomical scalpel and executing numerous intentional, accurate incisions. Afterwards, she peeled back the severed canvas to reveal its reverse, fashioning artworks catalogued with scientific detail. Marking each with a date highlighted their status as performances. In a photographic series from that year, called Self-Portrait With a Perforated Work, she inserted her features, hair, and digits through the openings, making her own form part of the artwork.

“Yes, all my art has a character of dissection … dissection like an evening nude,” she responded to inquiries about the pieces. For a close friend and scholar, this explanation was a key insight – a hint from a creator who seldom offered commentary.

A Dual Existence, Inextricably Linked

Art commentators in Croatia often viewed the artist's dual roles as completely distinct: the pioneering creator in one sphere, the technical draftsman funding her life in the other. “My perspective is that these two identities were profoundly intertwined,” states a scholar. “You can’t work for 35 years in the Institute of Anatomy daily for hours on end and not be influenced by what you see there.”

Anatomical Echoes in Geometric Shapes

The revelatory nature of a present showcase is the way it follows these anatomical influences within creations that superficially look completely abstract. During the middle of the 1980s, Schubert produced a series of geometric paintings – geometric shapes, subsequently labeled. Yugoslav critics lumped them into the fashionable neo-geo movement. Yet, the actual inspiration was found subsequently, while examining her personal papers.

“The question was posed: how are these forms made?” remembers a scholar. “She explained simply: they represent a human face.” Those characteristic colours – known among associates as her personal red and blue – were the exact shades employed to depict cervical arteries in medical texts for a surgical anatomy textbook utilized in medical faculties across Europe. “The connection was that both colors surfaced simultaneously,” the narrative adds. The shaped canvases were essentially distilled anatomical studies – painted while she worked on anatomical illustrations by day.

Shifting to Natural Materials

Towards the end of the seventies and start of the eighties, the artist's work shifted direction again. She began creating installations from branches bound with leather. She arranged collections of bone, petals, spices and ash on floors. Questioned about the move to natural substances, Schubert explained that art “was completely desiccated in the concept”. She felt compelled to transgress – to work with actual decaying material as an answer to conceptually sterile work.

A 1979 piece entitled 100 Roses, saw her strip a hundred roses of their petals. She wove the stems into circles on the ground with the leaves and petals arranged inside. Upon being viewed while organizing a show, it still held its power – the leaves and petals now completely dried out but miraculously intact. “The scent of roses persists,” a commentator notes. “The pigmentation survives.”

A Practitioner of Secrecy

“My aim is to remain enigmatic, to conceal my process,” the artist shared in late-life discussions. Obscurity was her technique. She would sometimes exhibit fake works concealing genuine artworks beneath her bed. She eliminated select sketches, only retaining signed reproductions. Even with showings at prestigious exhibitions and receiving acclaim as an innovator, she granted virtually no press access and her output stayed mostly obscure internationally. An ongoing display represents the initial large-scale presentation of her work internationally.

Addressing the Trauma of Battle

Then came the 1990s, and the Yugoslav Wars. Hostilities impacted the capital directly. She reacted with a collection of assembled pieces. She adhered press images and headlines onto panels. She reproduced and magnified them. Subsequently, she overpainted all elements – dark stripes akin to product codes. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|