‘I had to plunge the knife into the canvas’: Edita Schubert wielded her scalpel like painters use a brush.

The life of Edita Schubert was one of two distinct halves. For more than three decades, the artist from Croatia worked at the Anatomy Institute at the University of Zagreb’s medical faculty, meticulously drawing human anatomical specimens 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 medical textbooks,” says a director of a current show of her artistic output. “She was right in the middle of that practice … She showed no hesitation in the presence of dissections.” These detailed anatomical studies, comments a arts scholar, are continually used in textbooks for medical students currently in Croatia.

The Bleeding of Two Worlds

Having two professional lives was not uncommon for artists from Yugoslavia, who seldom could rely on art sales. Yet, the fusion of these two domains was distinctive. 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.

An Artistic Restlessness

At the start of the seventies, Schubert was still working within the confines of traditional painting. She crafted precise, ultra-realistic arrangements in oil and acrylic of sweets and salt and sugar shakers. Yet, irritation had been festering since her training. 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 tight canvas where I was expected to express myself,” she confided in a researcher, in a seldom-granted conversation. “I stabbed the knife into the canvas instead of the brush.”

The Artistic Performance of Cutting

By 1977, this impulse manifested physically. She made eleven big pieces. All were rendered in a uniform blue hue before taking a medical scalpel and making hundreds of deliberate, precise cuts. Subsequently, she turned back the cut material to reveal its reverse, creating works she documented with forensic precision. She timestamped each to emphasize their nature as events. 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.

“Absolutely, my work possesses a dissective quality … 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 glimpse into the mind of an elusive figure.

Two Lives, Deeply Connected

Art commentators in Croatia often viewed the artist's dual roles as completely distinct: the radical innovator in one corner, the medical illustrator who paid the bills on the other. “I have always believed that her dual selves were intimately linked,” notes a close friend. “You can’t work for 35 years in the Institute of Anatomy daily for hours on end without being affected by the surroundings.”

Medical Undercurrents in Abstract Forms

A key insight from a ongoing display is how it traces these medical undercurrents 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. Yet, the actual inspiration was found subsequently, while examining her personal papers.

“I inquired, how are these shapes created?” recalls a friend. “She explained simply: they represent a human face.” Those characteristic colours – 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 used across European medical faculties. “The connection was that both colors surfaced simultaneously,” the explanation continues. The geometric abstractions were, in fact, highly stylised human bodies – created concurrently with her daytime medical drawing.

Embracing Ephemeral Elements

During the transition into the 1980s, 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, the artist stated that contemporary art had “dried up intellectually”. She was driven to cross lines – to work with actual decaying material as an answer to conceptually sterile work.

A 1979 piece entitled 100 Roses, involved her removing petals from a hundred blooms. She wove the stems into circles on the ground positioning the floral remnants in the center. Upon being viewed while organizing a show, the piece retained its potency – the floral elements now totally preserved but miraculously intact. “The scent of roses persists,” a viewer remarks. “The hue has endured.”

The Artist of Mystery

“I always want to be mysterious, not to reveal what I’m doing,” the artist shared in late-life discussions. Secrecy was her strategy. On occasion, she displayed counterfeit pieces stashing authentic works out of sight. She destroyed certain drawings, leaving only signed photocopies in their place. Even with showings at prestigious exhibitions and being celebrated as a pioneering figure, she gave almost no interviews and her work remained largely unknown outside her region. A present retrospective marks her first significant external showcase.

Addressing the Trauma of Battle

Subsequently, the nineties dawned with the outbreak of conflict. War came to her city. The artist answered with a group of mixed-media works. She adhered press images and headlines onto panels. She photocopied and enlarged them. Subsequently, she overpainted all elements – dark stripes akin to product codes. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|