‘I had to plunge the knife into the canvas’: The artist Edita Schubert wielded her scalpel like creatives handle a paintbrush.

The life of Edita Schubert was one of two distinct halves. For more than three decades, the esteemed Croatian creator was employed by the Institute of Anatomy at the University of Zagreb’s medical faculty, meticulously drawing cadavers for study for medical reference books. 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 medical textbooks,” explains a curator of a new retrospective of Schubert’s work. “She was completely central to that discipline … She was entirely comfortable in the dissection room.” These detailed anatomical studies, notes a exhibition curator, are continually used in textbooks for medical students in Croatia today.

The Intermingling of Dual Vocations

A split career path was not rare for artists from Yugoslavia, who rarely had access to a commercial art market. But the way these two worlds bled into each other was. The surgical blades for precise cuts on bodies became instruments for slicing canvas. The medical tape meant for wound dressing secured her sliced creations. The test tubes typically reserved for laboratory samples transformed into containers for her life story.

A Frustration That Cut Deep

During the beginning of the 1970s, 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. But frustration had been building since her student days. During her time at the Zagreb art school, she’d been forced to paint nudes. “I had to plunge the knife into the canvas, it genuinely irritated me, that tight canvas where I was expected to express myself,” she confided in a researcher, among the rare individuals she spoke with. “I thrust the blade into the painting in place of a brush.”

The Artistic Performance of Cutting

By 1977, this impulse manifested physically. Schubert produced eleven large canvases. She painted each one a blue monochrome before taking a medical scalpel and executing numerous intentional, accurate incisions. Subsequently, she turned back the cut material to reveal its reverse, producing pieces recorded with clinical accuracy. She dated each one to underscore that they were actions. In a photographic series from that year, called Self-Portrait With a Perforated Work, she inserted her features, hair, and digits through the openings, transforming her physical self into creative matter.

“Absolutely, my work possesses a dissective quality … dissection like an evening nude,” the artist replied when asked about their meaning. According to a trusted associate and academic, this statement was illuminating – a glimpse into the mind of an elusive figure.

Two Lives, Deeply Connected

Art commentators in Croatia often viewed the artist's dual roles as completely distinct: the pioneering creator in one sphere, the anatomical artist supporting herself separately. “My opinion since then has been that her dual selves were intimately linked,” notes a close friend. “One cannot be employed for three decades in an anatomy department from early morning to mid-afternoon and remain untouched by the environment.”

Medical Undercurrents in Abstract Forms

What makes a current exhibition particularly revelatory 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 – trapezoidal forms, as they were later termed. Yugoslav critics lumped them into the fashionable neo-geo movement. But the truth was discovered only years later, when cataloguing Schubert’s estate.

“I inquired, how are these shapes created?” states an associate. “Her response was straightforward: it's a human face.” The signature tones – termed “Schubert red” and “Schubert blue” by peers – matched the precise colors used for drawing neck vasculature in anatomy books within a reference book for surgeons 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.

Embracing Ephemeral Elements

Towards the end of the seventies and start of the eighties, her creative approach changed once more. She began creating installations from branches bound with leather. She arranged collections of bone, petals, spices and ash on floors. Inquired regarding the change to ephemeral components, Schubert explained that art “was completely desiccated in the concept”. She felt an urge to break boundaries – to utilize genuinely perishable matter as a response to art that had metaphorically withered.

One work from 1979, 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 aroma remains,” a commentator notes. “The hue has endured.”

A Practitioner of Secrecy

“I prefer to stay cryptic, to hide my intentions,” the artist shared in late-life discussions. Mystery was her method. At times, she showed inauthentic creations while hiding originals under her bed. She destroyed certain drawings, only retaining signed reproductions. Although she participated in global art events and receiving acclaim as an innovator, she conducted hardly any media talks and her output stayed mostly obscure internationally. A present retrospective marks her first significant external showcase.

Confronting the Violence of War

The 1990s arrived, bringing the Yugoslav Wars. Violence reached Zagreb itself. She reacted with a collection of assembled pieces. She pasted newspaper photographs and text directly on to board. 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|