‘I felt forced to stab the knife through the canvas’: Edita Schubert wielded her scalpel like painters use a brush.

Edita Schubert led a dual existence. Throughout a career lasting over thirty years, the esteemed Croatian creator held a position at the Department of Anatomy at the medical school of the University of Zagreb, meticulously drawing human anatomical specimens for textbooks for surgeons. In her studio, she made art that resisted every attempt at categorisation – frequently employing the identical instruments.

“Her work involved crafting these meticulous, technical diagrams which were used in anatomy guides,” notes a curator of a new retrospective of her artistic output. “She was right in the middle of that practice … She showed no hesitation in the presence of dissections.” Her illustrations of human anatomy, comments a arts scholar, are still featured in manuals for medical students to this day in Croatia.

The Intermingling of Dual Vocations

Schubert’s dual vocation wasn’t unusual for artists from Yugoslavia, who often lacked a viable art market. However, the manner in which these spheres merged was unique. The surgical blades for precise cuts on bodies became instruments for slicing canvas. The medical tape meant for wound dressing held her perforated artworks together. Glass vials usually meant for scientific specimens became vessels for her autobiography.

A Frustration That Cut Deep

During the beginning of the 1970s, Schubert was initially operating within conventional painting boundaries. She crafted precise, ultra-realistic arrangements in acrylic and oil paints of candies and condiment containers. However, discontent had been growing since her academy years. During her time at the Zagreb art school, she was required to depict nude figures. “I needed to drive the blade into the painting, it truly frustrated me, that taut surface on which I had to talk about something,” she confided in a researcher, 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

By 1977, this impulse manifested physically. Schubert produced eleven large canvases. Each was coated in a single shade of blue then using an anatomical scalpel and making hundreds of deliberate, precise cuts. Afterwards, she peeled back the severed canvas to expose the underside, producing pieces recorded with clinical accuracy. She dated each one to underscore that they were actions. In one 1977 series of photographs, entitled Self-Portrait Behind a Perforated Canvas, she inserted her features, hair, and digits through the openings, making her own form part of the artwork.

“Indeed, my entire oeuvre carries a sense of dissection … dissection akin to a life study,” the artist replied when asked about their meaning. 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

Analysts frequently presented the artist's dual roles as completely distinct: the experimental avant garde artist on one side, the technical draftsman funding her life in the other. “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 and remain untouched by the environment.”

Anatomical Echoes in Geometric Shapes

What makes a current exhibition particularly revelatory is the way it follows these anatomical influences through works that, at first glance, seem entirely abstract. In the mid-1980s, she made a collection of angular works – trapeziums, as they came to be known. 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. “And she told me, it’s very simple, it’s a human face.” Those characteristic colours – known among associates as her personal red and blue – were identical tints employed to depict cervical arteries in medical texts for a surgical anatomy textbook employed throughout European medical schools. “It became clear those hues emerged concurrently,” the narrative adds. The angular paintings were actually abstracted human forms – painted while she worked on anatomical illustrations by day.

Shifting to Natural Materials

Towards the end of the seventies and start of the eighties, her creative approach changed once more. She started making assemblages from twigs secured with hide. She positioned gatherings of osseous material, floral remains, seasonings and cinders. Questioned about the move to natural substances, Schubert explained that art “was completely desiccated in the concept”. She was driven to cross lines – to engage with truly ephemeral substances 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, it still held its power – the floral elements now totally preserved yet astonishingly whole. “The scent of roses persists,” one observer marvels. “The colour is still there.”

A Practitioner of Secrecy

“I prefer to stay cryptic, to hide my intentions,” Schubert confided during one of her final conversations. Obscurity was her technique. She would sometimes exhibit fake works while hiding originals under her bed. She eradicated specific works, keeping merely autographed copies. Although she participated in global art events and being celebrated as a pioneering figure, 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

Subsequently, the nineties dawned with the outbreak of conflict. War came to her city. Schubert responded with a series of collages. She adhered press images and headlines onto panels. She photocopied and enlarged them. Then she painted over everything in acrylic – dark stripes akin to product codes. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|