‘I was compelled to drive the blade into the canvas’: The artist Edita Schubert wielded her scalpel like creatives handle a paintbrush.

Edita Schubert led a dual existence. 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, precisely illustrating cadavers for study for medical reference books. Within her artistic workspace, she created work that defied simple classification – often using the very same tools.

“Her work involved crafting these meticulous, technical diagrams which were used in anatomy guides,” says a curator of a new retrospective of the artist's oeuvre. “She was completely central to that discipline … She was entirely comfortable in the dissection room.” These detailed anatomical studies, notes a arts scholar, are still published in handbooks for surgical trainees in Croatia today.

The Bleeding of Two Worlds

A split career path was not rare for creatives in the former Yugoslavia, who often lacked a viable art market. However, the manner in which these spheres merged was unique. The scalpels she used to make clean incisions in cadavers became instruments for slicing canvas. The medical tape meant for wound dressing bound her fragmented pieces. Glass vials usually meant for scientific specimens transformed into containers for her life story.

A Creative Urge

In the early 1970s, Schubert was still creating within the limits of classic art. Her work included detailed, photorealistic compositions in paints and mediums of confectionery and salt and sugar shakers. However, discontent had been growing since her academy years. During her time at the Zagreb art school, the curriculum mandated life drawing. “I needed to drive the blade into the painting, it genuinely irritated me, that tight canvas where I was expected to express myself,” she once explained to a scholar, among the rare individuals she spoke with. “I used the knife to pierce the canvas, not a paintbrush.”

The Act of Dissection Becomes Art

In 1977, that urge took literal form. Schubert produced eleven large canvases. Each was coated in a single shade of blue then using an anatomical scalpel and making hundreds of deliberate, precise cuts. Subsequently, she turned back the cut material 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, entitled Self-Portrait Behind a Perforated Canvas, she pressed her visage, locks, and hands into the cuts, 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. According to a trusted associate and academic, this explanation was a key insight – a clue from an artist who rarely explained herself.

Two Lives, Deeply Connected

Analysts frequently presented the artist's dual roles as completely distinct: the radical innovator in one corner, the anatomical artist supporting herself separately. “My perspective is that these two identities were profoundly intertwined,” states a scholar. “One cannot be employed for three decades in an anatomy department daily for hours on end and remain untouched by the environment.”

Anatomical Echoes in Geometric Shapes

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. Contemporary critics categorized them under the trendy neo-geo label. But the truth was discovered only years later, when cataloguing Schubert’s estate.

“I asked her, how do you produce the trapeziums?” remembers a scholar. “Her response was straightforward: it's a human face.” Those characteristic colours – 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 used across European medical faculties. “It became clear those hues emerged concurrently,” the account notes. The geometric abstractions were, in fact, highly stylised human bodies – painted while she worked on anatomical illustrations by day.

Embracing Ephemeral Elements

During the transition into the 1980s, Schubert’s practice took another turn. 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, the artist stated that contemporary art had “dried up intellectually”. She felt compelled to transgress – to work with actual decaying material as a response to art that had metaphorically withered.

A 1979 piece entitled 100 Roses, featured her denuding a century of flowers. She wove the stems into circles on the ground positioning the floral remnants in the center. When encountered during exhibition preparation, the work maintained its impact – the leaves and petals now completely dried out yet astonishingly whole. “The aroma remains,” a viewer remarks. “The hue has endured.”

A Practitioner of Secrecy

“My aim is to remain enigmatic, to conceal my process,” she revealed in terminal-year interviews. Mystery was her method. At times, she showed inauthentic creations while hiding originals under her bed. She eliminated select sketches, 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.

Responding to the Horrors of Conflict

The 1990s arrived, bringing the Yugoslav Wars. War came to her city. She reacted with a collection of assembled pieces. She adhered press images and headlines onto panels. She reproduced and magnified them. Then she painted over everything in acrylic – black bars resembling barcodes. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|