‘I felt forced to stab the knife through the canvas’: The artist Edita Schubert brandished her medical instrument like other artists wield a brush.

The life of Edita Schubert was one of two distinct halves. For more than three decades, the esteemed Croatian creator worked at the Department of Anatomy at the medical school of the University of Zagreb, meticulously drawing cadavers for study for surgical textbooks. In her private atelier, she made art that resisted every attempt at categorisation – frequently employing the identical instruments.

“She was producing these really precise, technical illustrations which were used in surgical handbooks,” says a organizer of a fresh exhibition of her artistic output. “She was deeply immersed in that work … She was totally unfazed about being in dissections.” Her illustrations of human anatomy, observes a exhibition curator, are still featured in manuals for anatomy students in Croatia today.

The Intermingling of Dual Vocations

Having two professional lives was not uncommon for Yugoslav artists, who seldom could rely on art sales. But the way these two worlds bled into each other was. The surgical blades for precise cuts on bodies were transformed into tools for cutting fabric. The medical tape meant for wound dressing bound her fragmented pieces. Glass vials usually meant for scientific specimens transformed into containers for her life story.

A Creative Urge

At the start of the seventies, Schubert was initially operating within conventional painting boundaries. She crafted precise, ultra-realistic arrangements in acrylic and oil paints 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 was compelled to stab the knife through the fabric, it genuinely irritated me, that stretched surface I was forced to communicate upon,” she once explained to a scholar, among the rare individuals she spoke with. “I used the knife to pierce the canvas, not a paintbrush.”

The Artistic Performance of Cutting

In 1977, that urge took literal form. She made eleven big pieces. She painted each one a blue monochrome prior to picking up a surgical blade and executing numerous intentional, accurate incisions. She then folded back the sliced fabric to reveal its reverse, producing pieces recorded with clinical accuracy. Marking each with a date highlighted their status as performances. Through a set of photos created in 1977, titled Self-Portrait Through a Sliced Painting, she pushed her face, hair, and fingers through the perforations, 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. For an intimate confidant and researcher, this explanation was a key insight – a glimpse into the mind of an elusive figure.

A Dual Existence, Inextricably Linked

Croatian critics have tended to treat her twin professions as wholly divided: the pioneering creator in one sphere, the anatomical artist supporting herself separately. “I have always believed that her dual selves were intimately linked,” notes a close friend. “One cannot be employed for three decades in an anatomy department daily for hours on end and not be influenced by what you see there.”

Anatomical Echoes in Geometric Shapes

What makes a current exhibition particularly revelatory is the way it follows these anatomical influences within creations that superficially look completely abstract. In the mid-1980s, she made a collection of angular works – geometric shapes, subsequently labeled. Art writers grouped them with the popular geometric abstraction trend. But the truth was discovered only years later, during an archival review of her possessions.

“I asked her, how do you produce the trapeziums?” recalls a friend. “She explained simply: they represent a human face.” Those characteristic colours – what colleagues called “Schubert red” and “Schubert blue” – were the exact shades employed to depict cervical arteries in medical texts within a reference book for surgeons employed throughout European medical schools. “It became clear those hues emerged concurrently,” the account notes. The shaped canvases were essentially distilled anatomical studies – created concurrently with her daytime medical drawing.

Shifting to Natural Materials

Towards the end of the seventies and start of the eighties, the artist's work shifted direction again. She initiated works using wood lashed with straps. She composed displays of skeletal fragments, flower parts, herbs and soot. Questioned about the move to natural substances, the artist stated that contemporary art had “dried up intellectually”. She was driven to cross lines – to work with actual decaying material as an answer to conceptually sterile work.

One work from 1979, 100 Roses, saw her strip a hundred roses of their petals. She wove the stems into circles on the ground positioning the floral remnants in the center. When observed in a curatorial context, the work maintained its impact – the organic matter now fully desiccated yet astonishingly whole. “You can still smell the roses,” a viewer remarks. “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. On occasion, she displayed counterfeit pieces stashing authentic works out of sight. She eliminated select sketches, only retaining signed reproductions. Despite exhibiting at major international biennales and being celebrated as a pioneering figure, she conducted hardly any media talks and her output stayed mostly obscure internationally. An ongoing display represents the initial large-scale presentation of her work internationally.

Responding to the Horrors of Conflict

The 1990s arrived, bringing the Yugoslav Wars. Hostilities impacted the capital directly. Schubert responded with a series of collages. She pasted newspaper photographs and text directly on to board. She duplicated and expanded them. Then she obscured the surface with paint – black bars resembling barcodes. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|