‘I was compelled to drive the blade into the canvas’: The artist Edita Schubert used her surgical blade 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 Institute of Anatomy at the Zagreb University’s faculty of medicine, meticulously drawing cadavers for study for medical reference books. In her private atelier, she made art that resisted every attempt at categorisation – often using the very same tools.

“Her work involved crafting these meticulous, technical diagrams which were used in medical textbooks,” notes 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.” Her illustrations of human anatomy, comments a exhibition curator, are still featured in manuals for anatomy students currently in Croatia.

The Bleeding of Two Worlds

Schubert’s dual vocation wasn’t unusual 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 surgical blades for precise cuts on bodies became instruments for slicing canvas. The medical tape meant for wound dressing secured her sliced creations. Laboratory tubes commonly used for samples evolved into receptacles for her personal history.

A Frustration That Cut Deep

During the beginning of the 1970s, Schubert was initially operating within conventional painting boundaries. Her work included detailed, photorealistic compositions in acrylic and oil paints of confectionery and condiment containers. But frustration had been building since her student days. During her time at the Zagreb art school, she’d been forced to paint nudes. “I had to plunge the knife into the canvas, it truly frustrated me, that taut surface on which I had to talk about something,” she once explained to a scholar, in a seldom-granted conversation. “I stabbed the knife into the canvas instead of the brush.”

Where Anatomical Practice Meets Creation

In 1977, that urge took literal form. She made eleven big pieces. All were rendered in a uniform blue hue prior to picking up a surgical blade and making hundreds of deliberate, precise cuts. She then folded back the sliced fabric to expose the underside, creating works she documented with forensic precision. She timestamped each to emphasize their nature as events. In a photographic series from that year, entitled Self-Portrait Behind a Perforated Canvas, 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,” the artist replied when asked about their meaning. According to a trusted associate and academic, this was a revelation – 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 radical innovator in one corner, the medical illustrator who paid the bills on the other. “My opinion since then has been that these two identities were profoundly intertwined,” notes a close friend. “You can’t work for 35 years in the Institute of Anatomy from eight in the morning until three in the afternoon and not be influenced by what you see there.”

Medical Undercurrents in Abstract Forms

What makes a current exhibition particularly revelatory is how it traces these medical undercurrents within creations that superficially look completely abstract. In the mid-1980s, she made a collection of angular works – trapeziums, as they came to be known. Yugoslav critics lumped them into the fashionable neo-geo movement. However, the reality was uncovered much later, while examining her personal papers.

“I asked her, how do you produce the trapeziums?” remembers a scholar. “Her response was straightforward: it's a human face.” Those characteristic colours – known among associates as her personal red and blue – matched the precise colors employed to depict cervical arteries in medical texts for a surgical anatomy textbook utilized in medical faculties across Europe. “The connection was that both colors surfaced simultaneously,” 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

During the transition into the 1980s, her creative approach changed once more. She started making assemblages from twigs secured with hide. She composed displays of skeletal fragments, flower parts, herbs and soot. When asked why she’d shifted to such organic materials, she expressed that the art world had become “barren theoretically”. She felt compelled to transgress – to engage with truly ephemeral substances in reaction to a creatively arid landscape.

One work from 1979, 100 Roses, involved her removing petals from a hundred blooms. She braided the stems into round arrangements with the leaves and petals arranged inside. When encountered during exhibition preparation, it still held its power – the leaves and petals now completely dried out though wonderfully undamaged. “The scent of roses persists,” a commentator notes. “The hue has endured.”

The Artist of Mystery

“My aim is to remain enigmatic, to conceal my process,” she revealed in terminal-year interviews. Secrecy was her strategy. On occasion, she displayed counterfeit pieces while hiding originals under her bed. She eliminated select sketches, leaving only signed photocopies in their place. Although she participated in global art events and receiving acclaim as an innovator, she conducted hardly any media talks and her art was predominantly unrecognized abroad. An ongoing display represents the initial large-scale presentation of her work internationally.

Addressing the Trauma of Battle

Then came the 1990s, and the Yugoslav Wars. Violence reached Zagreb itself. She reacted with a collection of assembled pieces. She pasted newspaper photographs and text directly on to board. 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|