‘I had to plunge the knife into the canvas’: The artist Edita Schubert wielded her scalpel like painters use a brush.

Edita Schubert lived a double life. Over a period spanning thirty years, the late Croatian artist held a position at the Institute of Anatomy at the University of Zagreb’s medical faculty, carefully sketching human anatomical specimens for textbooks for surgeons. Within her artistic workspace, she made art that resisted every attempt at categorisation – regularly utilizing the exact implements.

“She was producing these really precise, technical illustrations which were used in anatomy guides,” notes a curator of a new retrospective of her artistic output. “She was deeply immersed in that work … She showed no hesitation in the presence of dissections.” Her anatomical drawings, notes a exhibition curator, are continually used in textbooks for anatomy students currently in Croatia.

Where Two Realms Converged

Schubert’s dual vocation wasn’t unusual 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 held her perforated artworks together. Laboratory tubes commonly used for samples transformed into containers for her life story.

A Frustration That Cut Deep

At the start of the seventies, Schubert was still creating within the limits of classic art. She produced meticulous, hyperrealistic still lifes in acrylic and oil paints of candies and tabletop items. However, discontent had been growing since her academy years. While studying at the fine arts academy in Zagreb, she was required to depict nude figures. “I needed to drive the blade into the painting, it genuinely irritated me, that tight canvas where I was expected to express myself,” she once explained to a scholar, among the rare individuals she spoke with. “I stabbed the knife into the canvas instead of the brush.”

The Artistic Performance of Cutting

By 1977, this impulse manifested physically. Schubert produced eleven large canvases. All were rendered in a uniform blue hue before taking a medical scalpel and making hundreds of deliberate, precise cuts. She then folded back the sliced fabric to show the backside, producing pieces recorded with clinical accuracy. She dated each one to underscore that they were actions. Through a set of photos created in 1977, 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 akin to a life study,” she responded to inquiries about the pieces. For an intimate confidant and researcher, this explanation was a key insight – a clue from an artist who rarely explained herself.

Separate Careers, Intertwined Roots

Croatian critics have tended to treat Schubert’s two lives as entirely separate: the radical innovator in one corner, the medical illustrator who paid the bills on the other. “My opinion since then has been that these two identities were profoundly intertwined,” notes a close friend. “One cannot be employed for three decades in an anatomy department daily for hours on end without being affected by the surroundings.”

Anatomical Echoes in Geometric Shapes

What makes a current exhibition particularly revelatory is how it maps these clinical themes in pieces that initially appear purely non-representational. During the middle of the 1980s, she made a collection of angular works – geometric shapes, subsequently labeled. Art writers grouped them with the popular geometric abstraction trend. Yet, the actual inspiration was found subsequently, while examining her personal papers.

“I inquired, how are these shapes created?” remembers a scholar. “Her response was straightforward: it's a human face.” The distinctive hues – known among associates as her personal red and blue – were the exact shades used for drawing neck vasculature in anatomy books within a reference book for surgeons utilized in medical faculties across Europe. “The connection was that both colors surfaced simultaneously,” the explanation continues. The angular paintings were actually abstracted human forms – painted while she worked on anatomical illustrations by day.

A Turn Towards the Organic

Towards the end of the seventies and start of the eighties, Schubert’s practice took another turn. She began creating installations from branches bound with leather. She composed displays of skeletal fragments, flower parts, herbs and soot. Inquired regarding the change to ephemeral components, the artist stated that contemporary art had “dried up intellectually”. She was driven to cross lines – to utilize genuinely perishable matter in reaction to a creatively arid landscape.

A 1979 piece entitled 100 Roses, involved her removing petals from a hundred blooms. She wove the stems into circles on the ground with the leaves and petals arranged inside. Upon being viewed while organizing a show, the piece retained its potency – the leaves and petals now completely dried out though wonderfully undamaged. “You can still smell the roses,” one observer marvels. “The pigmentation survives.”

An Elusive Creative Force

“I always want to be mysterious, not to reveal what I’m doing,” the artist shared in late-life discussions. Mystery was her method. She would sometimes exhibit fake works stashing authentic works out of sight. She destroyed certain drawings, keeping merely autographed copies. Even with showings at prestigious exhibitions and being celebrated as a pioneering figure, she conducted hardly any media talks and her work remained largely unknown outside her region. A present retrospective marks her first significant external showcase.

Addressing the Trauma of Battle

The 1990s arrived, bringing the Yugoslav Wars. Violence reached Zagreb itself. Schubert responded with a series of collages. She glued journalistic imagery and type onto surfaces. She duplicated and expanded them. Subsequently, she overpainted all elements – black bars resembling barcodes. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|