‘I felt forced to stab the knife through the canvas’: Edita Schubert brandished her medical instrument like painters use a brush.

The life of Edita Schubert was one of two distinct halves. For more than three decades, the late Croatian artist held a position at the Department of Anatomy at the University of Zagreb’s medical faculty, carefully sketching dissected human bodies for surgical textbooks. In her studio, she created work that defied simple classification – regularly utilizing the exact implements.

“Her work involved crafting these meticulous, technical diagrams which were used in surgical handbooks,” notes a organizer of a fresh exhibition of the artist's oeuvre. “She was completely central to that discipline … She was totally unfazed about being in dissections.” Her anatomical drawings, comments a museum curator, are continually used in textbooks for surgical trainees in Croatia today.

Where Two Realms Converged

Schubert’s dual vocation wasn’t unusual for Yugoslav artists, who often lacked a viable art market. Yet, the fusion of these two domains was distinctive. The surgical blades for precise cuts on bodies turned into devices for perforating paintings. Surgical tape designed for medical use bound her fragmented pieces. Laboratory tubes commonly used for samples transformed into containers for her life story.

A Creative Urge

In the early 1970s, Schubert was initially operating within conventional painting boundaries. She produced meticulous, hyperrealistic still lifes in oil and acrylic of sweets and condiment containers. 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 simply got on my nerves, that tight canvas where I was expected to express myself,” she confided in a researcher, one of the few people she ever granted an interview. “I stabbed the knife into the canvas instead of the brush.”

Where Anatomical Practice Meets Creation

By 1977, this impulse manifested physically. Schubert produced eleven large canvases. She painted each one a blue monochrome prior to picking up a surgical blade and making hundreds of deliberate, precise cuts. She then folded back the sliced fabric to show the backside, creating works she documented with forensic precision. She dated each one to underscore that they were actions. In a photographic series from that year, called Self-Portrait With a Perforated Work, she inserted her features, hair, and digits through the openings, making her own form part of the artwork.

“Absolutely, my work possesses a dissective quality … anatomical analysis similar to figure drawing,” the artist replied when asked about their meaning. According to a trusted associate and academic, this explanation was a key insight – a hint from a creator who seldom offered commentary.

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. “I have always believed that those two personalities were deeply, deeply connected,” states a scholar. “You can’t work for 35 years in the Institute of Anatomy daily for hours on end and remain untouched by the environment.”

Biological Inspirations Beneath the Surface

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 – trapeziums, as they came to be known. Contemporary critics categorized them under the trendy neo-geo label. Yet, the actual inspiration was found subsequently, when cataloguing Schubert’s estate.

“The question was posed: how are these forms made?” remembers a scholar. “Her response was straightforward: it's a human face.” The distinctive hues – what colleagues called “Schubert red” and “Schubert blue” – were the exact shades she’d been using to illustrate the two main arteries of the neck within a reference book for surgeons utilized in medical faculties across Europe. “It became clear those hues emerged concurrently,” the account notes. The angular paintings were actually abstracted human forms – created concurrently with her daytime medical drawing.

Embracing Ephemeral Elements

Towards the end of the seventies and start of the eighties, her creative approach changed once more. She started making assemblages from twigs secured with hide. She positioned gatherings of osseous material, floral remains, seasonings and cinders. Inquired regarding the change to ephemeral components, she expressed that the art world had become “barren theoretically”. She felt an urge to break boundaries – to utilize genuinely perishable matter as a response to art that had metaphorically withered.

One work from 1979, 100 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 piece retained its potency – the leaves and petals now completely dried out but miraculously intact. “The scent of roses persists,” a commentator notes. “The hue has endured.”

A Practitioner of Secrecy

“My aim is to remain enigmatic, to conceal my process,” the artist shared in late-life discussions. Mystery was her method. At times, she showed inauthentic creations while hiding originals under her bed. She destroyed certain drawings, keeping merely autographed copies. Although she participated in global art events and receiving acclaim as an innovator, she conducted hardly any media talks and her output stayed mostly obscure internationally. A present retrospective marks her first significant external showcase.

Addressing the Trauma of Battle

Subsequently, the nineties dawned with the outbreak of conflict. Violence reached Zagreb itself. Schubert responded with a series of collages. 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|