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

Edita Schubert lived a double life. Throughout a career lasting over thirty years, the late Croatian artist was employed by the Institute of Anatomy at the University of Zagreb’s medical faculty, precisely illustrating dissected human bodies for textbooks for surgeons. In her private atelier, 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,” says a curator of a new retrospective of Schubert’s work. “She was completely central to that discipline … She was totally unfazed about being in dissections.” Her anatomical drawings, observes a exhibition curator, are still published in handbooks for anatomy students currently in Croatia.

Where Two Realms Converged

Schubert’s dual vocation wasn’t unusual for creatives in the former 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. Adhesive tape intended for bandages bound her fragmented pieces. Laboratory tubes commonly used for samples transformed into containers for her life story.

A Frustration That Cut Deep

In the early 1970s, Schubert was still working within the confines of traditional painting. She produced meticulous, hyperrealistic still lifes in paints and mediums of confectionery and tabletop items. But frustration had been building since her student days. While studying at the fine arts academy in Zagreb, the curriculum mandated life drawing. “I had to plunge the knife into the canvas, it truly frustrated me, that tight canvas where I was expected to express myself,” she once explained to a scholar, among the rare individuals she spoke with. “I stabbed the knife into the canvas instead of the brush.”

Where Anatomical Practice Meets Creation

In 1977, that urge took literal form. The artist created eleven sizable paintings. She painted each one a blue monochrome prior to picking up a surgical blade and executing numerous intentional, accurate incisions. Afterwards, she peeled back the severed canvas to reveal its reverse, fashioning artworks catalogued with scientific detail. She timestamped each to emphasize their nature as events. In a photographic series from that year, entitled Self-Portrait Behind a Perforated Canvas, she pressed her visage, locks, and hands into the cuts, transforming her physical self into creative matter.

“Indeed, my entire oeuvre carries a sense of dissection … anatomical analysis similar to figure drawing,” she responded to inquiries about the pieces. For an intimate confidant and researcher, this statement was illuminating – a clue from an artist who rarely explained herself.

Two Lives, Deeply Connected

Analysts frequently presented the artist's dual roles as completely distinct: the pioneering creator in one sphere, the anatomical artist supporting herself separately. “My perspective is that her dual selves were intimately linked,” states a scholar. “It's impossible to spend 35 years at the Anatomy Institute daily for hours on end and not be influenced by what you see there.”

Medical Undercurrents in Abstract Forms

A key insight from a ongoing display is how it maps these clinical themes within creations that superficially look completely abstract. In the mid-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, when cataloguing Schubert’s estate.

“I asked her, how do you produce the trapeziums?” recalls a friend. “And she told me, it’s very simple, it’s a human face.” The signature tones – what colleagues called “Schubert red” and “Schubert blue” – were identical tints used for drawing neck vasculature in anatomy books within a reference book for surgeons utilized in medical faculties across Europe. “I realised that those two colours appeared at the same time,” the account notes. The geometric abstractions were, in fact, highly stylised human bodies – executed alongside her daily technical illustration work.

Shifting to Natural Materials

Towards the end of the seventies and start of the eighties, Schubert’s practice took another turn. 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 work with actual decaying material in reaction to a creatively arid landscape.

A 1979 piece entitled 100 Roses, featured her denuding a century of flowers. She braided the stems into round arrangements with the leaves and petals arranged inside. When observed in a curatorial context, the work maintained its impact – the organic matter now fully desiccated yet astonishingly whole. “The scent of roses persists,” one observer marvels. “The pigmentation survives.”

A Practitioner of Secrecy

“I prefer to stay cryptic, to hide my intentions,” she revealed in terminal-year interviews. Mystery was her method. She would sometimes exhibit fake works stashing authentic works out of sight. She destroyed certain drawings, only retaining signed reproductions. Even with showings at prestigious exhibitions and being celebrated as a pioneering figure, she conducted hardly any media talks and her art was predominantly unrecognized abroad. A present retrospective marks her first significant external showcase.

Responding to the Horrors of Conflict

The 1990s arrived, bringing 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 duplicated and expanded them. Then she painted over everything in acrylic – black bars resembling barcodes. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|