‘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. Over a period spanning thirty years, the late Croatian artist held a position at the Anatomy Institute at the medical school of the University of Zagreb, meticulously drawing cadavers for study for textbooks for surgeons. Within her artistic workspace, she produced art that eluded all labels – regularly utilizing the exact implements.

“Her work involved crafting these meticulous, technical diagrams which were used in anatomy guides,” explains a director of a current show of her artistic output. “She was completely central to that discipline … She was totally unfazed about being in dissections.” Her anatomical drawings, observes a museum curator, are still published in handbooks for medical students in Croatia today.

The Intermingling of Dual Vocations

A split career path was not rare for artists from Yugoslavia, who rarely had access to a commercial art market. However, the manner in which these spheres merged was unique. The medical knives for anatomical dissection turned into devices for perforating paintings. The medical tape meant for wound dressing bound her fragmented pieces. Glass vials usually meant for scientific specimens evolved into receptacles for her personal history.

A Creative Urge

During the beginning of the 1970s, Schubert was initially operating within conventional painting boundaries. She crafted precise, ultra-realistic arrangements in paints and mediums of sweets and tabletop items. Yet, irritation had been festering since her training. During her time at the Zagreb art school, she was required to depict nude figures. “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 later told an art historian, in a seldom-granted conversation. “I thrust the blade into the painting in place of a brush.”

The Act of Dissection Becomes Art

In 1977, that urge took literal form. She made eleven big pieces. Each was coated in a single shade of blue prior to picking up a surgical blade and executing numerous intentional, accurate incisions. Subsequently, she turned back the cut material to reveal its reverse, creating works she documented with forensic precision. Marking each with a date highlighted their status as performances. Through a set of photos created in 1977, entitled Self-Portrait Behind a Perforated Canvas, she pushed her face, hair, and fingers through the perforations, making her own form part of the artwork.

“Yes, all my art has a character 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

Analysts frequently presented her twin professions as wholly divided: the radical innovator in one corner, the anatomical artist supporting herself separately. “My opinion since then has been that her dual selves were intimately linked,” states a scholar. “You can’t work for 35 years in the Institute of Anatomy daily for hours on end and not be influenced by what you see there.”

Biological Inspirations Beneath the Surface

What makes a current exhibition particularly revelatory is how it traces these medical undercurrents in pieces that initially appear purely non-representational. Around 1985, Schubert produced a series of geometric paintings – trapeziums, as they came to be known. Yugoslav critics lumped them into the fashionable neo-geo movement. Yet, the actual inspiration was found subsequently, while examining her personal papers.

“I inquired, how are these shapes created?” remembers a scholar. “Her response was straightforward: it's a human face.” Those characteristic colours – known among associates as her personal red and blue – were identical tints used for drawing neck vasculature in anatomy books for a surgical anatomy textbook employed throughout European medical schools. “It became clear those hues emerged concurrently,” the narrative adds. The angular paintings were actually abstracted human forms – created concurrently with her daytime medical drawing.

A Turn Towards the Organic

During the transition into the 1980s, the artist's work shifted direction again. 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, Schubert explained that art “was completely desiccated in the concept”. She was driven to cross lines – to engage with truly ephemeral substances as a response to art that had metaphorically withered.

An artwork dating to 1979, One Hundred Roses, involved her removing petals from a hundred blooms. She wove the stems into circles on the ground placing the foliage and petals within. When observed in a curatorial context, the work maintained its impact – the organic matter now fully desiccated yet astonishingly whole. “The aroma remains,” a commentator notes. “The colour is still there.”

A Practitioner of Secrecy

“My aim is to remain enigmatic, to conceal my process,” the artist shared in late-life discussions. Obscurity was her technique. At times, she showed inauthentic creations while hiding originals under her bed. She eliminated select sketches, only retaining signed reproductions. Although she participated in global art events and being celebrated as a pioneering figure, she conducted hardly any media talks 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

Subsequently, the nineties dawned with the outbreak of conflict. Violence reached Zagreb itself. She reacted with a collection of assembled pieces. She pasted newspaper photographs and text directly on to board. She photocopied and enlarged them. Subsequently, she overpainted all elements – dark stripes akin to product codes. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|