‘I was compelled to drive the blade into the canvas’: The artist Edita Schubert brandished her medical instrument like painters use a brush.

Edita Schubert lived a double life. Over a period spanning thirty years, the esteemed Croatian creator was employed by the Department of Anatomy at the University of Zagreb’s medical faculty, meticulously drawing cadavers for study for medical reference books. In her private atelier, she created work that defied simple classification – often using the very same tools.

“Her work involved crafting these meticulous, technical diagrams which were used in anatomy guides,” notes a curator of a new retrospective of the artist's oeuvre. “She was completely central to that discipline … She was entirely comfortable in the dissection room.” Her illustrations of human anatomy, comments a arts scholar, are continually used in textbooks for surgical trainees in Croatia today.

The Bleeding of Two Worlds

Schubert’s dual vocation wasn’t unusual for creatives in the former Yugoslavia, who rarely had access to a commercial art market. However, the manner in which these spheres merged was unique. The surgical blades for precise cuts on bodies were transformed into tools for cutting fabric. Surgical tape designed for medical use held her perforated artworks together. 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. She crafted precise, ultra-realistic arrangements in paints and mediums of confectionery and condiment containers. Yet, irritation had been festering since her training. At Zagreb’s Academy of Fine Arts, the curriculum mandated life drawing. “I needed to drive the blade into the painting, it genuinely irritated me, that stretched surface I was forced to communicate upon,” she later told an art historian, one of the few people she ever granted an interview. “I stabbed the knife into the canvas instead of the brush.”

The Artistic Performance of Cutting

In 1977, that urge took literal form. Schubert produced eleven large canvases. She painted each one a blue monochrome before taking a medical scalpel and making hundreds of deliberate, precise cuts. She then folded back the sliced fabric to reveal its reverse, producing pieces recorded with clinical accuracy. She timestamped each to emphasize their nature as events. In one 1977 series of photographs, titled Self-Portrait Through a Sliced Painting, she inserted her features, hair, and digits through the openings, turning her own body into artistic material.

“Indeed, my entire oeuvre carries a sense of dissection … dissection akin to a life study,” Schubert answered regarding the works' significance. 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

Croatian critics have tended to treat her twin professions as wholly divided: the radical innovator in one corner, the anatomical artist supporting herself separately. “I have always believed that those two personalities were deeply, deeply connected,” notes a close friend. “It's impossible to spend 35 years at the Anatomy Institute from eight in the morning until three in the afternoon without being affected by the surroundings.”

Biological Inspirations Beneath the Surface

A key insight from a ongoing display is how it maps these clinical themes within creations that superficially look completely abstract. In the mid-1980s, the artist created a group of shaped canvases – geometric shapes, subsequently labeled. Art writers grouped them with the popular geometric abstraction trend. However, the reality was uncovered much later, when cataloguing Schubert’s estate.

“The question was posed: how are these forms made?” recalls a friend. “And she told me, it’s very simple, it’s a human face.” The signature tones – termed “Schubert red” and “Schubert blue” by peers – were the exact shades she’d been using to illustrate the two main arteries of the neck within a reference book for surgeons utilized in medical faculties across Europe. “I realised that those two colours appeared at the same time,” the explanation continues. The shaped canvases were essentially distilled anatomical studies – executed alongside her daily technical illustration work.

Embracing Ephemeral Elements

In the late 70s and early 80s, the artist's work shifted direction again. She started making assemblages from twigs secured with hide. She arranged collections of bone, petals, spices and ash on floors. When asked why she’d shifted to such organic materials, she expressed that the art world had become “barren theoretically”. She felt an urge to break boundaries – to utilize genuinely perishable matter as a response to art that had metaphorically withered.

A 1979 piece entitled 100 Roses, involved her removing petals from a hundred blooms. She intertwined the stalks into circular forms placing the foliage and petals within. When encountered during exhibition preparation, the piece retained its potency – the floral elements now totally preserved though wonderfully undamaged. “The scent of roses persists,” a commentator notes. “The colour is still there.”

An Elusive Creative Force

“I always want to be mysterious, not to reveal what I’m doing,” the artist shared in late-life discussions. Obscurity was her technique. At times, she showed inauthentic creations concealing genuine artworks beneath her bed. She eradicated specific works, leaving only signed photocopies in their place. Despite exhibiting at major international biennales and receiving acclaim as an innovator, she granted virtually no press access and her output stayed mostly obscure internationally. A current museum exhibition is her first major solo show outside her homeland.

Responding to the Horrors of Conflict

Then came the 1990s, and the Yugoslav Wars. War came to her city. She reacted with a collection of assembled pieces. She glued journalistic imagery and type onto surfaces. She photocopied and enlarged them. Subsequently, she overpainted all elements – dark stripes akin to product codes. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|