‘I had to plunge the knife into the canvas’: Edita Schubert used her surgical blade like other artists wield a brush.

The life of Edita Schubert was one of two distinct halves. For more than three decades, the esteemed Croatian creator held a position at the Department of Anatomy at the medical school of the University of Zagreb, meticulously drawing dissected human bodies for medical reference books. Within her artistic workspace, she created work that defied simple classification – 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 deeply immersed in that work … She showed no hesitation in the presence of dissections.” These detailed anatomical studies, notes a arts scholar, are still featured in manuals for medical students in Croatia today.

The Bleeding of Two Worlds

A split career path was not rare for Yugoslav artists, who often lacked a viable art market. 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 bound her fragmented pieces. Laboratory tubes commonly used for samples evolved into receptacles for her personal history.

An Artistic Restlessness

In the early 1970s, Schubert was initially operating within conventional painting boundaries. She produced meticulous, hyperrealistic still lifes in acrylic and oil paints of candies and salt and sugar shakers. Yet, irritation had been festering since her training. During her time at the Zagreb art school, she was required to depict nude figures. “I was compelled to stab the knife through the fabric, it simply got on my nerves, that taut surface on which I had to talk about something,” she confided in a researcher, in a seldom-granted conversation. “I thrust the blade into the painting in place of a brush.”

The Artistic Performance of Cutting

That year, this desire became a concrete action. 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. Afterwards, she peeled back the severed canvas to reveal its reverse, fashioning artworks catalogued with scientific detail. Marking each with a date highlighted their status as performances. In one 1977 series of photographs, entitled Self-Portrait Behind a Perforated Canvas, 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,” 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.

A Dual Existence, Inextricably Linked

Analysts frequently presented the artist's dual roles as completely distinct: the radical innovator in one corner, the anatomical artist supporting herself separately. “My perspective is 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 and not be influenced by what you see there.”

Medical Undercurrents in Abstract Forms

What makes a current exhibition particularly revelatory is how it maps these clinical themes in pieces that initially appear purely non-representational. In the mid-1980s, Schubert produced a series of geometric paintings – trapeziums, as they came to be known. Yugoslav critics lumped them into the fashionable neo-geo movement. However, the reality was uncovered much later, while examining her personal papers.

“I inquired, how are these shapes created?” states an associate. “And she told me, it’s very simple, it’s a human face.” The signature tones – known among associates as her personal red and blue – matched the precise colors she’d been using to illustrate the two main arteries of the neck within a reference book for surgeons 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.

Embracing Ephemeral Elements

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. When asked why she’d shifted to such organic materials, Schubert explained that art “was completely desiccated in the concept”. She was driven to cross lines – to work with actual decaying material 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 with the leaves and petals arranged inside. When encountered during exhibition preparation, the work maintained its impact – the organic matter now fully desiccated though wonderfully undamaged. “The aroma remains,” a viewer remarks. “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. On occasion, she displayed counterfeit pieces while hiding originals under her bed. She eliminated select sketches, only retaining signed reproductions. Despite exhibiting at major international biennales and gaining recognition as a trailblazer, she granted virtually no press access and her art was predominantly unrecognized abroad. An ongoing display represents the initial large-scale presentation of her work internationally.

Confronting the Violence of War

Then came the 1990s, and the Yugoslav Wars. Hostilities impacted the capital directly. The artist answered with a group of mixed-media works. She adhered press images and headlines onto panels. 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|