‘I had to plunge the knife into the canvas’: The artist Edita Schubert brandished her medical instrument like painters use a brush.

The life of Edita Schubert was one of two distinct halves. For more than three decades, the late Croatian artist was employed by the Department of Anatomy at the Zagreb University’s faculty of medicine, precisely illustrating dissected human bodies for medical reference books. In her studio, she created work that defied simple classification – often using the very same tools.

“Her work involved crafting these meticulous, technical diagrams which were used in anatomy guides,” explains a organizer of a fresh exhibition of Schubert’s work. “She was right in the middle of that practice … She was totally unfazed about being in dissections.” Her illustrations of human anatomy, observes a museum curator, are continually used in textbooks for anatomy students in Croatia today.

The Bleeding of Two Worlds

Having two professional lives was not uncommon for creatives in the former Yugoslavia, who seldom could rely on art sales. However, the manner in which these spheres merged was unique. The scalpels she used to make clean incisions in cadavers became instruments for slicing canvas. Surgical tape designed for medical use bound her fragmented pieces. Glass vials usually meant for scientific specimens became vessels for her autobiography.

An Artistic Restlessness

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 sweets and tabletop items. But frustration had been building since her student days. During her time at the Zagreb art school, the curriculum mandated life drawing. “I had to plunge the knife into the canvas, it truly frustrated me, that stretched surface I was forced to communicate upon,” 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.”

The Act of Dissection Becomes Art

In 1977, that urge took literal form. She made eleven big pieces. All were rendered in a uniform blue hue prior to picking up a surgical blade and executing numerous intentional, accurate incisions. She then folded back the sliced fabric to show the backside, fashioning artworks catalogued with scientific detail. She dated each one to underscore that they were actions. In one 1977 series of photographs, titled Self-Portrait Through a Sliced Painting, she pushed her face, hair, and fingers through the perforations, turning her own body into artistic material.

“Yes, all my art has a character of dissection … dissection like an evening nude,” Schubert answered regarding the works' significance. According to a trusted associate and academic, this was a revelation – a clue from an artist who rarely explained herself.

A Dual Existence, Inextricably Linked

Croatian critics have tended to treat 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 those two personalities were deeply, deeply connected,” states a scholar. “You can’t work for 35 years in the Institute of Anatomy 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 maps these clinical themes through works that, at first glance, seem entirely abstract. In the mid-1980s, the artist created a group of shaped canvases – trapeziums, as they came to be known. Art writers grouped them with the popular geometric abstraction trend. However, the reality was uncovered much later, when cataloguing Schubert’s estate.

“The question was posed: how are these forms made?” remembers a scholar. “Her response was straightforward: it's a human face.” The signature tones – what colleagues called “Schubert red” and “Schubert blue” – were the exact shades used for drawing neck vasculature in anatomy books within a reference book for surgeons used across European medical faculties. “It became clear those hues emerged concurrently,” the account notes. The geometric abstractions were, in fact, highly stylised human bodies – created concurrently with her daytime medical drawing.

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 positioned gatherings of osseous material, floral remains, seasonings and cinders. When asked why she’d shifted to such organic materials, the artist stated that contemporary art had “dried up intellectually”. She felt compelled to transgress – to utilize genuinely perishable matter as an answer to conceptually sterile work.

One work from 1979, 100 Roses, saw her strip a hundred roses of their petals. She braided the stems into round arrangements placing the foliage and petals within. When observed in a curatorial context, the piece retained its potency – the floral elements now totally preserved though wonderfully undamaged. “You can still smell the roses,” one observer marvels. “The pigmentation survives.”

An Elusive Creative Force

“My aim is to remain enigmatic, to conceal my process,” Schubert confided during one of her final conversations. Obscurity was her technique. At times, she showed inauthentic creations stashing authentic works out of sight. She destroyed certain drawings, only retaining signed reproductions. Despite exhibiting at major international biennales and being celebrated as a pioneering figure, she gave almost no interviews and her output stayed mostly obscure internationally. An ongoing display represents the initial large-scale presentation of her work internationally.

Addressing the Trauma of Battle

The 1990s arrived, bringing the Yugoslav Wars. Violence reached Zagreb itself. Schubert responded with a series of collages. She glued journalistic imagery and type onto surfaces. She reproduced and magnified them. Then she painted over everything in acrylic – black bars resembling barcodes. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|