‘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. Over a period spanning thirty years, the esteemed Croatian creator worked at the Anatomy Institute at the medical school of the University of Zagreb, precisely illustrating cadavers for study for medical reference books. Within her artistic workspace, she produced art that eluded all labels – frequently employing the identical instruments.

“She created these highly accurate, technical drawings which were used in anatomy guides,” explains a organizer of a fresh exhibition of Schubert’s work. “She was deeply immersed in that work … She was entirely comfortable in the dissection room.” These detailed anatomical studies, notes a exhibition curator, are continually used in textbooks for medical students currently in Croatia.

The Bleeding of Two Worlds

Schubert’s dual vocation wasn’t unusual for artists from Yugoslavia, who seldom could rely on art sales. But the way these two worlds bled into each other was. The surgical blades for precise cuts on bodies were transformed into tools for cutting fabric. Surgical tape designed for medical use bound her fragmented pieces. Glass vials usually meant for scientific specimens evolved into receptacles for her personal history.

An Artistic Restlessness

During the beginning of the 1970s, Schubert was still creating within the limits of classic art. Her work included detailed, photorealistic compositions in oil and acrylic of confectionery and tabletop items. Yet, irritation had been festering since her training. At Zagreb’s Academy of Fine Arts, the curriculum mandated life drawing. “I needed to drive the blade into the painting, it truly frustrated me, that stretched surface I was forced to communicate upon,” she once explained to a scholar, among the rare individuals she spoke with. “I stabbed the knife into the canvas instead of the brush.”

The Artistic Performance of Cutting

By 1977, this impulse manifested physically. The artist created eleven sizable paintings. She painted each one a blue monochrome then using an anatomical scalpel and executing numerous intentional, accurate incisions. Afterwards, she peeled back the severed canvas to reveal its reverse, producing pieces recorded with clinical accuracy. She dated each one to underscore that they were actions. In one 1977 series of photographs, titled Self-Portrait Through a Sliced Painting, she inserted her features, hair, and digits through the openings, turning her own body into artistic material.

“Yes, all my art has a character of dissection … dissection akin to a life study,” the artist replied when asked about their meaning. According to a trusted associate and academic, this statement was illuminating – a clue from an artist who rarely explained herself.

A Dual Existence, Inextricably Linked

Art commentators in Croatia often viewed Schubert’s two lives as entirely separate: the radical innovator in one corner, the technical draftsman funding her life in the other. “My opinion since then has been that her dual selves were intimately linked,” notes a close friend. “It's impossible to spend 35 years at the Anatomy Institute from early morning to mid-afternoon without being affected by the surroundings.”

Medical Undercurrents in Abstract Forms

The revelatory nature of a present showcase is how it maps these clinical themes in pieces that initially appear purely non-representational. Around 1985, she made a collection of angular works – trapezoidal forms, as they were later termed. Contemporary critics categorized them under the trendy neo-geo label. Yet, the actual inspiration was found subsequently, during an archival review of her possessions.

“The question was posed: how are these forms made?” states an associate. “Her response was straightforward: it's a human face.” The distinctive hues – what colleagues called “Schubert red” and “Schubert blue” – were the exact shades used for drawing neck vasculature in anatomy books in a manual for surgical anatomy utilized in medical faculties across Europe. “The connection was that both colors surfaced simultaneously,” the explanation continues. The geometric abstractions were, in fact, highly stylised human bodies – executed alongside her daily technical illustration work.

A Turn Towards the Organic

Towards the end of the seventies and start of the eighties, the artist's work shifted direction again. She started making assemblages from twigs secured with hide. She composed displays of skeletal fragments, flower parts, herbs and soot. Questioned about the move to natural substances, the artist stated that contemporary art had “dried up intellectually”. She was driven to cross lines – to engage with truly ephemeral substances as an answer to conceptually sterile work.

An artwork dating to 1979, One Hundred Roses, involved her removing petals from a hundred blooms. She braided the stems into round arrangements with the leaves and petals arranged inside. When encountered during exhibition preparation, it still held its power – the leaves and petals now completely dried out yet astonishingly whole. “You can still smell the roses,” a viewer remarks. “The hue has endured.”

A Practitioner of Secrecy

“I always want to be mysterious, not to reveal what I’m doing,” she revealed in terminal-year interviews. Mystery was her method. At times, she showed inauthentic creations concealing genuine artworks beneath her bed. She destroyed certain drawings, keeping merely autographed copies. Although she participated in global art events 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.

Confronting the Violence of War

The 1990s arrived, bringing the Yugoslav Wars. Hostilities impacted the capital directly. She reacted with a collection of assembled pieces. 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|