‘I had to plunge the knife into the canvas’: Edita Schubert brandished her medical instrument like other artists wield a brush.

Edita Schubert lived a double life. Over a period spanning thirty years, the late Croatian artist worked at the Anatomy Institute at the medical school of the University of Zagreb, carefully sketching dissected human bodies for surgical textbooks. Within her artistic workspace, she made art that resisted every attempt at categorisation – regularly utilizing the exact implements.

“She created these highly accurate, technical drawings which were used in anatomy guides,” notes a director of a current show of Schubert’s work. “She was deeply immersed in that work … She showed no hesitation in the presence of dissections.” Her anatomical drawings, observes a exhibition curator, are still published in handbooks for surgical trainees in Croatia today.

The Intermingling of Dual Vocations

Schubert’s dual vocation wasn’t unusual for creatives in the former Yugoslavia, who rarely had access to a commercial art market. However, the manner in which these spheres merged was unique. The surgical blades for precise cuts on bodies were transformed into tools for cutting fabric. Surgical tape designed for medical use held her perforated artworks together. The test tubes typically reserved for laboratory samples evolved into receptacles for her personal history.

A Frustration That Cut Deep

During the beginning of the 1970s, Schubert was still working within the confines of traditional painting. Her work included detailed, photorealistic compositions in oil and acrylic of confectionery and condiment containers. However, discontent had been growing since her academy years. At Zagreb’s Academy of Fine Arts, the curriculum mandated life drawing. “I was compelled to stab the knife through the fabric, it genuinely irritated me, that tight canvas where I was expected to express myself,” she once explained to a scholar, 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. The artist created eleven sizable paintings. All were rendered in a uniform blue hue then using an anatomical scalpel and executing numerous intentional, accurate incisions. Subsequently, she turned back the cut material to show the backside, creating works she documented with forensic precision. She dated each one to underscore that they were actions. In one 1977 series of photographs, called Self-Portrait With a Perforated Work, she inserted her features, hair, and digits through the openings, turning her own body into artistic material.

“Indeed, my entire oeuvre carries a sense of dissection … anatomical analysis similar to figure drawing,” 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.

Two Lives, Deeply Connected

Analysts frequently presented Schubert’s two lives as entirely separate: the experimental avant garde artist on one side, the anatomical artist supporting herself separately. “I have always believed that her dual selves were intimately linked,” states a scholar. “One cannot be employed for three decades in an anatomy department daily for hours on end without being affected by the surroundings.”

Anatomical Echoes in Geometric Shapes

The revelatory nature of a present showcase is the way it follows these anatomical influences within creations that superficially look completely abstract. Around 1985, the artist created a group of shaped canvases – geometric shapes, subsequently labeled. Art writers grouped them with the popular geometric abstraction trend. However, the reality was uncovered much later, during an archival review of her possessions.

“The question was posed: how are these forms made?” states an associate. “Her response was straightforward: it's a human face.” The distinctive hues – known among associates as her personal red and blue – were identical tints used for drawing neck vasculature in anatomy books for a surgical anatomy textbook employed throughout European medical schools. “It became clear those hues emerged concurrently,” the account notes. The angular paintings were actually abstracted human forms – created concurrently with her daytime medical drawing.

A Turn Towards the Organic

During the transition into the 1980s, the artist's work shifted direction again. She initiated works using wood lashed with straps. She arranged collections of bone, petals, spices and ash on floors. Questioned about the move to natural substances, she expressed that the art world had become “barren theoretically”. 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, saw her strip a hundred roses of their petals. She wove the stems into circles on the ground with the leaves and petals arranged inside. When observed in a curatorial context, it still held its power – the floral elements now totally preserved yet astonishingly whole. “The aroma remains,” a commentator notes. “The colour is still there.”

The Artist of Mystery

“My aim is to remain enigmatic, to conceal my process,” Schubert confided during one of her final conversations. Mystery was her method. She would sometimes exhibit fake works while hiding originals under her bed. She destroyed certain drawings, only retaining signed reproductions. Even with showings at prestigious exhibitions and being celebrated as a pioneering figure, she granted virtually no press access and her art was predominantly unrecognized abroad. 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 adhered press images and headlines onto panels. She reproduced and magnified them. Then she obscured the surface with paint – black bars resembling barcodes. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|