‘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 late Croatian artist worked at the Institute of Anatomy at the medical school of the University of Zagreb, precisely illustrating cadavers for study for surgical textbooks. Within her artistic workspace, she made art that resisted every attempt at categorisation – regularly utilizing the exact implements.

“She was producing these really precise, technical illustrations which were used in medical textbooks,” says a curator of a new retrospective of Schubert’s work. “She was deeply immersed in that work … She was totally unfazed about being in dissections.” Her illustrations of human anatomy, notes a exhibition curator, are continually used in textbooks for surgical trainees currently in Croatia.

The Bleeding of Two Worlds

Having two professional lives was not uncommon for Yugoslav artists, 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. Surgical tape designed for medical use held her perforated artworks together. Glass vials usually meant for scientific specimens became vessels for her autobiography.

An Artistic Restlessness

During the beginning of the 1970s, Schubert was still creating within the limits of classic art. She produced meticulous, hyperrealistic still lifes in paints and mediums of confectionery and condiment containers. However, discontent had been growing since her academy years. At Zagreb’s Academy of Fine Arts, she was required to depict nude figures. “I needed to drive the blade into the painting, it simply got on my nerves, that tight canvas where I was expected to express myself,” she later told an art historian, in a seldom-granted conversation. “I used the knife to pierce the canvas, not a paintbrush.”

The Artistic Performance of Cutting

In 1977, that urge took literal form. The artist created eleven sizable paintings. She painted each one a blue monochrome prior to picking up a surgical blade and making hundreds of deliberate, precise cuts. Afterwards, she peeled back the severed canvas to reveal its reverse, producing pieces recorded with clinical accuracy. She dated each one to underscore that they were actions. Through a set of photos created in 1977, called Self-Portrait With a Perforated Work, she inserted her features, hair, and digits through the openings, transforming her physical self into creative matter.

“Yes, all my art has a character of dissection … dissection akin to a life study,” the artist replied when asked about their meaning. For a close friend and scholar, this statement was illuminating – a glimpse into the mind of an elusive figure.

Two Lives, Deeply Connected

Analysts frequently presented her twin professions as wholly divided: the experimental avant garde artist on one side, the technical draftsman funding her life in the other. “My perspective is that her dual selves were intimately linked,” notes a close friend. “You can’t work for 35 years in the Institute of Anatomy from eight in the morning until three in the afternoon without being affected by the surroundings.”

Medical Undercurrents in Abstract Forms

A key insight from a ongoing display is how it traces these medical undercurrents 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. However, the reality was uncovered much later, when cataloguing Schubert’s estate.

“I inquired, how are these shapes created?” remembers a scholar. “She explained simply: they represent a human face.” Those characteristic colours – termed “Schubert red” and “Schubert blue” by peers – were identical tints used for drawing neck vasculature in anatomy books in a manual for surgical anatomy used across European medical faculties. “I realised that those two colours appeared at the same time,” the narrative adds. The angular paintings were actually abstracted human forms – executed alongside her daily technical illustration work.

A Turn Towards the Organic

Towards the end of the seventies and start of the eighties, the artist's work shifted direction again. She started making assemblages from twigs secured with hide. 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 felt compelled to transgress – 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. Upon being viewed while organizing a show, the work maintained its impact – the floral elements now totally preserved though wonderfully undamaged. “You can still smell the roses,” a commentator notes. “The pigmentation survives.”

An Elusive Creative Force

“I prefer to stay cryptic, to hide my intentions,” the artist shared in late-life discussions. Secrecy was her strategy. She would sometimes exhibit fake works concealing genuine artworks beneath her bed. She eradicated specific works, leaving only signed photocopies in their place. Even with showings at prestigious exhibitions and being celebrated as a pioneering figure, she gave almost no interviews and her work remained largely unknown outside her region. A present retrospective marks her first significant external showcase.

Addressing the Trauma of Battle

Subsequently, the nineties dawned with the outbreak of conflict. Violence reached Zagreb itself. The artist answered with a group of mixed-media works. She pasted newspaper photographs and text directly on to board. She duplicated and expanded them. Then she painted over everything in acrylic – black bars resembling barcodes. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|