‘I felt forced to stab the knife through the canvas’: Edita Schubert wielded her scalpel like other artists wield a brush.

Edita Schubert led a dual existence. Over a period spanning thirty years, the esteemed Croatian creator worked at the Institute of Anatomy at the Zagreb University’s faculty of medicine, precisely illustrating human anatomical specimens for medical reference books. Within her artistic workspace, she produced art that eluded all labels – frequently employing the identical instruments.

“She was producing these really precise, technical illustrations which were used in surgical handbooks,” explains a curator of a new retrospective of Schubert’s work. “She was deeply immersed in that work … She was entirely comfortable in the dissection room.” Her anatomical drawings, comments a museum curator, are still featured in manuals for medical students to this day in Croatia.

The Bleeding of Two Worlds

Having two professional lives was not uncommon for Yugoslav artists, 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 turned into devices for perforating paintings. Adhesive tape intended for bandages held her perforated artworks together. Glass vials usually meant for scientific specimens became vessels for her autobiography.

A Creative Urge

In the early 1970s, Schubert was still working within the confines of traditional painting. She crafted precise, ultra-realistic arrangements in oil and acrylic of candies and salt and sugar shakers. Yet, irritation had been festering since her training. While studying at the fine arts academy in Zagreb, she’d been forced to paint nudes. “I had to plunge the knife into the canvas, it truly frustrated me, that stretched surface I was forced to communicate upon,” she confided in a researcher, in a seldom-granted conversation. “I stabbed the knife into the canvas instead of the brush.”

The Artistic Performance of Cutting

By 1977, this impulse manifested physically. Schubert produced eleven large canvases. All were rendered in a uniform blue hue then using an anatomical scalpel and performing countless measured, exact slices. She then folded back the sliced fabric to show the backside, producing pieces recorded with clinical accuracy. She timestamped each to emphasize their nature as events. In one 1977 series of photographs, titled Self-Portrait Through a Sliced Painting, she pushed her face, hair, and fingers through the perforations, making her own form part of the artwork.

“Indeed, my entire oeuvre carries a sense of dissection … anatomical analysis similar to figure drawing,” she responded to inquiries about the pieces. According to a trusted associate and academic, this explanation was a key insight – a glimpse into the mind of an elusive figure.

Separate Careers, Intertwined Roots

Art commentators in Croatia often viewed her twin professions as wholly divided: the pioneering creator in one sphere, the medical illustrator who paid the bills on the other. “I have always believed that these two identities were profoundly intertwined,” states a scholar. “One cannot be employed for three decades in an anatomy department from early morning to mid-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. In the mid-1980s, Schubert produced a series of geometric paintings – trapezoidal forms, as they were later termed. 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?” recalls a friend. “She explained simply: they represent a human face.” Those characteristic colours – known among associates as her personal red and blue – were identical tints she’d been using to illustrate the two main arteries of the neck in a manual for surgical anatomy used across European medical faculties. “It became clear those hues emerged concurrently,” the account notes. The angular paintings were actually abstracted human forms – executed alongside her daily technical illustration work.

Embracing Ephemeral Elements

In the late 70s and early 80s, her creative approach changed once more. She began creating installations from branches bound with leather. She composed displays of skeletal fragments, flower parts, herbs and soot. Inquired regarding the change to ephemeral components, the artist stated that contemporary art had “dried up intellectually”. She felt an urge to break boundaries – to work with actual decaying material as an answer to conceptually sterile work.

An artwork dating to 1979, One Hundred Roses, saw her strip a hundred roses of their petals. She intertwined the stalks into circular forms placing the foliage and petals within. When encountered during exhibition preparation, the piece retained its potency – the leaves and petals now completely dried out though wonderfully undamaged. “The scent of roses persists,” a commentator notes. “The hue has endured.”

The Artist of Mystery

“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 while hiding originals under her bed. She eliminated select sketches, only retaining signed reproductions. Despite exhibiting at major international biennales and being celebrated as a pioneering figure, she granted virtually no press access and her work remained largely unknown outside her region. An ongoing display represents the initial large-scale presentation of her work internationally.

Addressing the Trauma of Battle

Then came the 1990s, and the Yugoslav Wars. Hostilities impacted the capital directly. Schubert responded with a series of collages. She pasted newspaper photographs and text directly on to board. She reproduced and magnified them. Subsequently, she overpainted all elements – rectangular forms reminiscent of scanning lines. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|