‘I felt forced to stab the knife through the canvas’: The artist Edita Schubert brandished her medical instrument like creatives handle a paintbrush.

Edita Schubert led a dual existence. Over a period spanning thirty years, the late Croatian artist worked at the Institute of Anatomy at the University of Zagreb’s medical faculty, meticulously drawing cadavers for study for surgical textbooks. In her studio, she produced art that eluded all labels – regularly utilizing the exact implements.

“She was producing these really precise, technical illustrations which were used in medical textbooks,” says a organizer of a fresh exhibition of her artistic output. “She was right in the middle of that practice … She was totally unfazed about being in dissections.” Her anatomical drawings, comments a museum curator, are still published in handbooks for surgical trainees to this day in Croatia.

The Bleeding of Two Worlds

Schubert’s dual vocation wasn’t unusual for creatives in the former Yugoslavia, who seldom could rely on art sales. But the way these two worlds bled into each other was. The scalpels she used to make clean incisions in cadavers turned into devices for perforating paintings. Adhesive tape intended for bandages bound her fragmented pieces. The test tubes typically reserved for laboratory samples transformed into containers for her life story.

A Frustration That Cut Deep

At the start of the seventies, Schubert was still creating within the limits of classic art. She crafted precise, ultra-realistic arrangements in oil and acrylic of candies and tabletop items. But frustration had been building since her student days. While studying at the fine arts academy in Zagreb, she was required to depict nude figures. “I was compelled to stab the knife through the fabric, it truly frustrated me, that taut surface on which I had to talk about something,” she confided in a researcher, among the rare individuals she spoke with. “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. Schubert produced eleven large canvases. All were rendered in a uniform blue hue prior to picking up a surgical blade and performing countless measured, exact slices. Afterwards, she peeled back the severed canvas to reveal its reverse, fashioning artworks catalogued with scientific detail. She dated each one to underscore that they were actions. Through a set of photos created in 1977, titled Self-Portrait Through a Sliced Painting, she inserted her features, hair, and digits through the openings, making her own form part of the artwork.

“Indeed, my entire oeuvre carries a sense of dissection … dissection akin to a life study,” Schubert answered regarding the works' significance. For a close friend and scholar, this explanation was a key insight – a hint from a creator who seldom offered commentary.

Two Lives, Deeply Connected

Croatian critics have tended to treat the artist's dual roles as completely distinct: the experimental avant garde artist on one side, the technical draftsman funding her life in the other. “My opinion since then has been that those two personalities were deeply, deeply connected,” notes a close friend. “One cannot be employed for three decades in an anatomy department from eight in the morning until three in the afternoon and not be influenced by what you see there.”

Medical Undercurrents in Abstract Forms

The revelatory nature of a present showcase is the way it follows these anatomical influences through works that, at first glance, seem entirely abstract. During the middle of the 1980s, the artist created a group of shaped canvases – trapezoidal forms, as they were later termed. Yugoslav critics lumped them into the fashionable neo-geo movement. However, the reality was uncovered much later, during an archival review of her possessions.

“The question was posed: how are these forms made?” remembers a scholar. “Her response was straightforward: it's a human face.” The distinctive hues – known among associates as her personal red and blue – matched the precise colors used for drawing neck vasculature in anatomy books within a reference book for surgeons employed throughout European medical schools. “I realised that those two colours appeared at the same time,” the narrative adds. 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, her creative approach changed once more. She began creating installations from branches bound with leather. She composed displays of skeletal fragments, flower parts, herbs and soot. Questioned about the move to natural substances, Schubert explained that art “was completely desiccated in the concept”. She felt compelled to transgress – to engage with truly ephemeral substances 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 encountered during exhibition preparation, the work maintained its impact – the organic matter now fully desiccated yet astonishingly whole. “The aroma remains,” one observer marvels. “The hue has endured.”

The Artist of Mystery

“My aim is to remain enigmatic, to conceal my process,” Schubert confided during one of her final conversations. Mystery was her method. She would sometimes exhibit fake works while hiding originals under her bed. She destroyed certain drawings, only retaining signed reproductions. Despite exhibiting at major international biennales and receiving acclaim as an innovator, she conducted hardly any media talks and her art was predominantly unrecognized abroad. 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 pasted newspaper photographs and text directly on to board. She reproduced and magnified them. Subsequently, she overpainted all elements – dark stripes akin to product codes. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|