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

Edita Schubert led a dual existence. Throughout a career lasting over thirty years, the esteemed Croatian creator held a position at the Anatomy Institute at the Zagreb University’s faculty of medicine, precisely illustrating cadavers for study for surgical textbooks. In her private atelier, she made art that resisted every attempt at categorisation – often using the very same tools.

“She created these highly accurate, technical drawings which were used in anatomy guides,” says a curator of a new retrospective of the artist's oeuvre. “She was completely central to that discipline … She was entirely comfortable in the dissection room.” These detailed anatomical studies, observes a arts scholar, are still featured in manuals for surgical trainees in Croatia today.

Where Two Realms Converged

Schubert’s dual vocation wasn’t unusual for creatives in the former Yugoslavia, who seldom could rely on art sales. However, the manner in which these spheres merged was unique. The medical knives for anatomical dissection became instruments for slicing canvas. Adhesive tape intended for bandages bound her fragmented pieces. Laboratory tubes commonly used for samples evolved into receptacles for her personal history.

A Creative Urge

In the early 1970s, Schubert was still creating within the limits of classic art. She crafted precise, ultra-realistic arrangements in paints and mediums of confectionery and salt and sugar shakers. But frustration had been building since her student days. While studying at the fine arts academy in Zagreb, she was required to depict nude figures. “I had to plunge the knife into the canvas, it genuinely irritated me, that stretched surface I was forced to communicate upon,” she confided in a researcher, one of the few people she ever granted an interview. “I used the knife to pierce the canvas, not a paintbrush.”

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, fashioning artworks catalogued with scientific detail. She timestamped each to emphasize their nature as events. Through a set of photos created in 1977, called Self-Portrait With a Perforated Work, she pushed her face, hair, and fingers through the perforations, making her own form part of the artwork.

“Yes, all my art has a character of dissection … dissection akin to a life study,” the artist replied when asked about their meaning. According to a trusted associate and academic, this explanation was a key insight – a hint from a creator who seldom offered commentary.

Two Lives, Deeply Connected

Analysts frequently presented her twin professions as wholly divided: the pioneering creator in one sphere, the medical illustrator who paid the bills on the other. “My opinion since then has been that these two identities were profoundly intertwined,” states a scholar. “It's impossible to spend 35 years at the Anatomy Institute from early morning to mid-afternoon without being affected by the surroundings.”

Biological Inspirations Beneath the Surface

What makes a current exhibition particularly revelatory is how it traces these medical undercurrents in pieces that initially appear purely non-representational. Around 1985, she made a collection of angular works – trapezoidal forms, as they were later termed. Art writers grouped them with the popular geometric abstraction trend. But the truth was discovered only years later, while examining her personal papers.

“The question was posed: how are these forms made?” states an associate. “She explained simply: they represent a human face.” Those characteristic colours – what colleagues called “Schubert red” and “Schubert blue” – matched the precise colors 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 shaped canvases were essentially distilled anatomical studies – painted while she worked on anatomical illustrations by day.

Shifting to Natural Materials

In the late 70s and early 80s, her creative approach changed once more. 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, she expressed that the art world had become “barren theoretically”. She was driven to cross lines – to utilize genuinely perishable matter as a response to art that had metaphorically withered.

An artwork dating to 1979, One Hundred Roses, saw her strip a hundred roses of their petals. She wove the stems into circles on the ground placing the foliage and petals within. When encountered during exhibition preparation, the work maintained its impact – the floral elements now totally preserved but miraculously intact. “The aroma remains,” one observer marvels. “The colour is still there.”

An Elusive Creative Force

“I always want to be mysterious, not to reveal what I’m doing,” Schubert confided during one of her final conversations. Mystery was her method. On occasion, she displayed counterfeit pieces concealing genuine artworks beneath her bed. She destroyed certain drawings, only retaining signed reproductions. Even with showings at prestigious exhibitions and being celebrated as a pioneering figure, she conducted hardly any media talks and her output stayed mostly obscure internationally. A present retrospective marks her first significant external showcase.

Addressing the Trauma of Battle

Subsequently, the nineties dawned with the outbreak of conflict. Hostilities impacted the capital directly. The artist answered with a group of mixed-media works. She adhered press images and headlines onto panels. She photocopied and enlarged them. Then she obscured the surface with paint – rectangular forms reminiscent of scanning lines. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|