‘I was compelled to drive the blade into the canvas’: The artist Edita Schubert used her surgical blade like other artists wield a brush.

Edita Schubert led a dual existence. Over a period spanning thirty years, the late Croatian artist worked at the Department of Anatomy at the medical school of the University of Zagreb, meticulously drawing dissected human bodies for textbooks for surgeons. In her studio, she produced art that eluded all labels – regularly utilizing the exact implements.

“She created these highly accurate, technical drawings which were used in medical textbooks,” notes a organizer of a fresh exhibition of her artistic output. “She was completely central to that discipline … She was entirely comfortable in the dissection room.” Her illustrations of human anatomy, comments a museum curator, are still featured in manuals for anatomy students currently in Croatia.

The Bleeding of Two Worlds

Having two professional lives was not uncommon for creatives in the former Yugoslavia, who rarely had access to a commercial art market. Yet, the fusion of these two domains was distinctive. The medical knives for anatomical dissection were transformed into tools for cutting fabric. Adhesive tape intended for bandages secured her sliced creations. Glass vials usually meant for scientific specimens 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. Her work included detailed, photorealistic compositions 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, the curriculum mandated life drawing. “I was compelled to stab the knife through the fabric, it simply got on my nerves, that stretched surface I was forced to communicate upon,” she confided in a researcher, among the rare individuals she spoke with. “I stabbed the knife into the canvas instead of the brush.”

The Artistic Performance of Cutting

That year, this desire became a concrete action. Schubert produced eleven large canvases. Each was coated in a single shade of blue prior to picking up a surgical blade and executing numerous intentional, accurate incisions. Afterwards, she peeled back the severed canvas to expose the underside, creating works she documented with forensic precision. She dated each one to underscore that they were actions. In one 1977 series of photographs, entitled Self-Portrait Behind a Perforated Canvas, she pressed her visage, locks, and hands into the cuts, turning her own body into artistic material.

“Yes, all my art has a character of dissection … anatomical analysis similar to figure drawing,” she responded to inquiries about the pieces. For a close friend and scholar, this was a revelation – a glimpse into the mind of an elusive figure.

Two Lives, Deeply Connected

Croatian critics have tended to treat the artist's dual roles as completely distinct: the radical innovator in one corner, the medical illustrator who paid the bills on the other. “My perspective is that these two identities were profoundly intertwined,” explains a confidant. “You can’t work for 35 years in the Institute of Anatomy from eight in the morning until three in the afternoon without being affected by the surroundings.”

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, the artist created a group of shaped canvases – trapeziums, as they came to be known. Art writers grouped them with the popular geometric abstraction trend. But the truth was discovered only years later, when cataloguing Schubert’s estate.

“I inquired, how are these shapes created?” states an associate. “She explained simply: they represent a human face.” Those characteristic colours – what colleagues called “Schubert red” and “Schubert blue” – were identical tints employed to depict cervical arteries in medical texts within a reference book for surgeons employed throughout European medical schools. “It became clear those hues emerged concurrently,” 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 positioned gatherings of osseous material, floral remains, seasonings and cinders. 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 an answer to conceptually sterile work.

One work from 1979, 100 Roses, involved her removing petals from a hundred blooms. She intertwined the stalks into circular forms with the leaves and petals arranged inside. When observed in a curatorial context, the piece retained its potency – the organic matter now fully desiccated though wonderfully undamaged. “You can still smell the roses,” one observer marvels. “The pigmentation survives.”

The Artist of Mystery

“My aim is to remain enigmatic, to conceal my process,” the artist shared in late-life discussions. Secrecy was her strategy. She would sometimes exhibit fake works while hiding originals under 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 conducted hardly any media talks and her work remained largely unknown outside her region. A present retrospective marks her first significant external showcase.

Addressing the Trauma of Battle

The 1990s arrived, bringing the Yugoslav Wars. Hostilities impacted the capital directly. The artist answered with a group of mixed-media works. She adhered press images and headlines onto panels. She photocopied and enlarged them. Then she obscured the surface with paint – dark stripes akin to product codes. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|