‘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 lived a double life. Throughout a career lasting over thirty years, the late Croatian artist held a position at the Anatomy Institute at the University of Zagreb’s medical faculty, meticulously drawing cadavers for study for surgical textbooks. In her private atelier, she made art that resisted every attempt at categorisation – frequently employing the identical instruments.

“She created these highly accurate, technical drawings which were used in anatomy guides,” notes a organizer of a fresh exhibition of Schubert’s work. “She was deeply immersed in that work … She showed no hesitation in the presence of dissections.” These detailed anatomical studies, observes a exhibition curator, are continually used in textbooks for surgical trainees to this day in Croatia.

Where Two Realms Converged

Schubert’s dual vocation wasn’t unusual for Yugoslav artists, who seldom could rely on art sales. Yet, the fusion of these two domains was distinctive. The medical knives for anatomical dissection turned into devices for perforating paintings. The medical tape meant for wound dressing bound her fragmented pieces. Laboratory tubes commonly used for samples became vessels for her autobiography.

An Artistic Restlessness

At the start of the seventies, Schubert was still working within the confines of traditional painting. She produced meticulous, hyperrealistic still lifes in oil and acrylic of candies and salt and sugar shakers. However, discontent had been growing since her academy years. At Zagreb’s Academy of Fine Arts, she was required to depict nude figures. “I had to plunge the knife into the canvas, it truly frustrated me, that stretched surface I was forced to communicate upon,” she once explained to a scholar, one of the few people she ever granted an interview. “I thrust the blade into the painting in place of a brush.”

Where Anatomical Practice Meets Creation

In 1977, that urge took literal form. Schubert produced eleven large canvases. All were rendered in a uniform blue hue before taking a medical scalpel 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 a photographic series from that year, entitled Self-Portrait Behind a Perforated Canvas, she inserted her features, hair, and digits through the openings, transforming her physical self into creative matter.

“Absolutely, my work possesses a dissective quality … dissection like an evening nude,” the artist replied when asked about their meaning. For a close friend and scholar, this statement was illuminating – a clue from an artist who rarely explained herself.

Two Lives, Deeply Connected

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 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

A key insight from a ongoing display is the way it follows these anatomical influences 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. Contemporary critics categorized them under the trendy neo-geo label. However, the reality was uncovered much later, while examining her personal papers.

“I inquired, how are these shapes created?” recalls a friend. “She explained simply: they represent a human face.” The signature tones – termed “Schubert red” and “Schubert blue” by peers – were identical tints used for drawing neck vasculature in anatomy books in a manual for surgical anatomy employed throughout European medical schools. “The connection was that both colors surfaced simultaneously,” the account notes. The shaped canvases were essentially distilled anatomical studies – created concurrently with her daytime medical drawing.

Embracing Ephemeral Elements

In the late 70s and early 80s, the artist's work shifted direction again. She initiated works using wood lashed with straps. 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 work with actual decaying material 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 placing the foliage and petals within. When encountered during exhibition preparation, it still held its power – the leaves and petals now completely dried out but miraculously intact. “You can still smell the roses,” a commentator notes. “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. At times, she showed inauthentic creations concealing genuine artworks beneath her bed. She destroyed certain drawings, only retaining signed reproductions. Despite exhibiting at major international biennales and gaining recognition as a trailblazer, she gave almost no interviews and her work remained largely unknown outside her region. A present retrospective marks her first significant external showcase.

Responding to the Horrors of Conflict

The 1990s arrived, bringing the Yugoslav Wars. Violence reached Zagreb itself. The artist answered with a group of mixed-media works. She adhered press images and headlines onto panels. She duplicated and expanded them. Then she painted over everything in acrylic – dark stripes akin to product codes. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|