‘I was compelled to drive the blade into the canvas’: Edita Schubert used her surgical blade like creatives handle a paintbrush.

Edita Schubert lived a double life. Throughout a career lasting over thirty years, the artist from Croatia worked at the Institute of Anatomy at the Zagreb University’s faculty of medicine, carefully sketching cadavers for study for textbooks for surgeons. In her studio, 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,” says a director of a current show of the artist's oeuvre. “She was right in the middle of that practice … She was entirely comfortable in the dissection room.” Her illustrations of human anatomy, observes a museum curator, are still published in handbooks for surgical trainees in Croatia today.

The Intermingling of Dual Vocations

A split career path was not rare for artists from Yugoslavia, who seldom could rely on art sales. Yet, the fusion of these two domains was distinctive. The scalpels she used to make clean incisions in cadavers became instruments for slicing canvas. The medical tape meant for wound dressing secured her sliced creations. Laboratory tubes commonly used for samples evolved into receptacles for her personal history.

An Artistic Restlessness

During the beginning of the 1970s, Schubert was still creating within the limits of classic art. Her work included detailed, photorealistic compositions in paints and mediums of confectionery and salt and sugar shakers. Yet, irritation had been festering since her training. During her time at the Zagreb art school, the curriculum mandated life drawing. “I needed to drive the blade into the painting, it simply got on my nerves, that tight canvas where I was expected to express myself,” she later told an art historian, one of the few people she ever granted an interview. “I used the knife to pierce the canvas, not a paintbrush.”

Where Anatomical Practice Meets Creation

By 1977, this impulse manifested physically. Schubert produced eleven large canvases. She painted each one a blue monochrome prior to picking up a surgical blade and making hundreds of deliberate, precise cuts. She then folded back the sliced fabric to reveal its reverse, fashioning artworks catalogued with scientific detail. Marking each with a date highlighted their status as performances. In one 1977 series of photographs, called Self-Portrait With a Perforated Work, she inserted her features, hair, and digits through the openings, transforming her physical self into creative matter.

“Yes, all my art has a character of dissection … anatomical analysis similar to figure drawing,” Schubert answered regarding the works' significance. According to a trusted associate and academic, this explanation was a key insight – a hint from a creator who seldom offered commentary.

A Dual Existence, Inextricably Linked

Analysts frequently presented her twin professions as wholly divided: the radical innovator in one corner, the medical illustrator who paid the bills on the other. “I have always believed that those two personalities were deeply, deeply connected,” states a scholar. “You can’t work for 35 years in the Institute of Anatomy daily for hours on end and remain untouched by the environment.”

Medical Undercurrents in Abstract Forms

A key insight from a ongoing display is the way it follows these anatomical influences in pieces that initially appear purely non-representational. 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. Yet, the actual inspiration was found subsequently, while examining her personal papers.

“I inquired, how are these shapes created?” recalls a friend. “And she told me, it’s very simple, it’s a human face.” The distinctive hues – termed “Schubert red” and “Schubert blue” by peers – were the exact shades used for drawing neck vasculature in anatomy books within a reference book for surgeons used across European medical faculties. “The connection was that both colors surfaced simultaneously,” the explanation continues. The shaped canvases were essentially distilled anatomical studies – painted while she worked on anatomical illustrations by day.

Embracing Ephemeral Elements

Towards the end of the seventies and start of the eighties, the artist's work shifted direction again. She started making assemblages from twigs secured with hide. She positioned gatherings of osseous material, floral remains, seasonings and cinders. Inquired regarding the change to ephemeral components, she expressed that the art world had become “barren theoretically”. She was driven to cross lines – to utilize genuinely perishable matter in reaction to a creatively arid landscape.

One work from 1979, 100 Roses, saw her strip a hundred roses of their petals. She braided the stems into round arrangements with the leaves and petals arranged inside. When encountered during exhibition preparation, the piece retained its potency – the leaves and petals now completely dried out but miraculously intact. “The scent of roses persists,” a viewer remarks. “The colour is still there.”

The Artist of Mystery

“I prefer to stay cryptic, to hide my intentions,” the artist shared in late-life discussions. Obscurity was her technique. She would sometimes exhibit fake works while hiding originals under her bed. She eliminated select sketches, leaving only signed photocopies in their place. Although she participated in global art events and being celebrated as a pioneering figure, she conducted hardly any media talks and her art was predominantly unrecognized abroad. A present retrospective marks her first significant external showcase.

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 glued journalistic imagery and type onto surfaces. She reproduced and magnified them. Then she painted over everything in acrylic – black bars resembling barcodes. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|