‘I felt forced to stab the knife through 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. Throughout a career lasting over thirty years, the esteemed Croatian creator held a position at the Department of Anatomy at the Zagreb University’s faculty of medicine, precisely illustrating dissected human bodies for surgical textbooks. Within her artistic workspace, she produced art that eluded all labels – regularly utilizing the exact implements.

“She created these highly accurate, technical drawings which were used in medical textbooks,” says a curator of a new retrospective of the artist's oeuvre. “She was completely central to that discipline … She showed no hesitation in the presence of dissections.” Her anatomical drawings, observes a exhibition curator, are continually used in textbooks for medical students to this day in Croatia.

Where Two Realms Converged

A split career path was not rare for artists from Yugoslavia, who seldom could rely on art sales. Yet, the fusion of these two domains was distinctive. The surgical blades for precise cuts on bodies turned into devices for perforating paintings. The medical tape meant for wound dressing secured her sliced creations. The test tubes typically reserved for laboratory samples evolved into receptacles for her personal history.

An Artistic Restlessness

At the start of the seventies, Schubert was initially operating within conventional painting boundaries. Her work included detailed, photorealistic compositions in acrylic and oil paints of sweets and tabletop items. Yet, irritation had been festering since her training. During her time at the Zagreb art school, the curriculum mandated life drawing. “I had to plunge the knife into the canvas, it genuinely irritated me, that taut surface on which I had to talk about something,” she once explained to a scholar, among the rare individuals she spoke with. “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. Each was coated in a single shade of blue then using an anatomical scalpel and performing countless measured, exact slices. She then folded back the sliced fabric to expose the underside, fashioning artworks catalogued with scientific detail. She dated each one to underscore that they were actions. In one 1977 series of photographs, called Self-Portrait With a Perforated Work, she pressed her visage, locks, and hands into the cuts, making her own form part of the artwork.

“Indeed, my entire oeuvre carries a sense of dissection … dissection like an evening nude,” Schubert answered regarding the works' significance. For an intimate confidant and researcher, this was a revelation – a hint from a creator who seldom offered commentary.

Two Lives, Deeply Connected

Croatian critics have tended to treat the artist's dual roles as completely distinct: the pioneering creator in one sphere, the anatomical artist supporting herself separately. “My opinion since then has been that her dual selves were intimately linked,” notes a close friend. “One cannot be employed for three decades in an anatomy department from eight in the morning until three in the afternoon and remain untouched by the environment.”

Anatomical Echoes in Geometric Shapes

The revelatory nature of a present showcase is how it traces these medical undercurrents in pieces that initially appear purely non-representational. During the middle of the 1980s, Schubert produced a series of geometric paintings – geometric shapes, subsequently labeled. Contemporary critics categorized them under the trendy neo-geo label. But the truth was discovered only years later, while examining her personal papers.

“I inquired, how are these shapes created?” states an associate. “She explained simply: they represent a human face.” Those characteristic colours – known among associates as her personal red and blue – were the exact shades used for drawing neck vasculature in anatomy books for a surgical anatomy textbook used across European medical faculties. “I realised that those two colours appeared at the same time,” the narrative adds. The geometric abstractions were, in fact, highly stylised human bodies – executed alongside her daily technical illustration work.

Shifting to Natural Materials

In the late 70s and early 80s, her creative approach changed once more. She initiated works using wood lashed with straps. She composed displays of skeletal fragments, flower parts, herbs and soot. 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 in reaction to a creatively arid landscape.

A 1979 piece entitled 100 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, it still held its power – the floral elements now totally preserved though wonderfully undamaged. “You can still smell the roses,” one observer marvels. “The pigmentation survives.”

A Practitioner of Secrecy

“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, only retaining signed reproductions. Despite exhibiting at major international biennales and gaining recognition as a trailblazer, she conducted hardly any media talks and her art was predominantly unrecognized abroad. A present retrospective marks her first significant external showcase.

Addressing the Trauma of Battle

Then came the 1990s, and the Yugoslav Wars. War came to her city. She reacted with a collection of assembled pieces. She glued journalistic imagery and type onto surfaces. She photocopied and enlarged them. Subsequently, she overpainted all elements – black bars resembling barcodes. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|