‘I was compelled to drive the blade into the canvas’: The artist Edita Schubert brandished her medical instrument like painters use a brush.

Edita Schubert lived a double life. Over a period spanning thirty years, the artist from Croatia worked at the Institute of Anatomy at the University of Zagreb’s medical faculty, carefully sketching dissected human bodies for textbooks for surgeons. In her private atelier, she produced art that eluded all labels – frequently employing the identical instruments.

“She created these highly accurate, technical drawings which were used in anatomy guides,” says a organizer of a fresh exhibition of Schubert’s work. “She was right in the middle of that practice … She was totally unfazed about being in dissections.” These detailed anatomical studies, observes a arts scholar, are still featured in manuals for medical students to this day in Croatia.

The Intermingling of Dual Vocations

Schubert’s dual vocation wasn’t unusual for Yugoslav artists, who often lacked a viable art market. But the way these two worlds bled into each other was. The medical knives for anatomical dissection became instruments for slicing canvas. Surgical tape designed for medical use secured her sliced creations. Glass vials usually meant for scientific specimens evolved into receptacles for her personal history.

A Creative Urge

In the early 1970s, Schubert was still creating within the limits of classic art. She crafted precise, ultra-realistic arrangements in acrylic and oil paints of confectionery and salt and sugar shakers. However, discontent had been growing since her academy years. While studying at the fine arts academy in Zagreb, she was required to depict nude figures. “I had to plunge the knife into the canvas, 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 used the knife to pierce the canvas, not a paintbrush.”

The Act of Dissection Becomes Art

That year, this desire became a concrete action. Schubert produced eleven large canvases. Each was coated in a single shade of blue prior to picking up a surgical blade and executing numerous intentional, accurate incisions. Subsequently, she turned back the cut material to expose the underside, producing pieces recorded with clinical accuracy. Marking each with a date highlighted their status as performances. Through a set of photos created in 1977, called Self-Portrait With a Perforated Work, 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 … anatomical analysis similar to figure drawing,” the artist replied when asked about their meaning. For an intimate confidant and researcher, this explanation was a key insight – a glimpse into the mind of an elusive figure.

Separate Careers, Intertwined Roots

Croatian critics have tended to treat Schubert’s two lives as entirely separate: the experimental avant garde artist on one side, the medical illustrator who paid the bills on the other. “My perspective is that these two identities were profoundly intertwined,” notes a close friend. “It's impossible to spend 35 years at the Anatomy Institute daily for hours on end and remain untouched by the environment.”

Medical Undercurrents in Abstract Forms

What makes a current exhibition particularly revelatory is how it maps these clinical themes through works that, at first glance, seem entirely abstract. During the middle of the 1980s, she made a collection of angular works – geometric shapes, subsequently labeled. Contemporary critics categorized them under the trendy neo-geo label. But the truth was discovered only years later, while examining her personal papers.

“I inquired, how are these shapes created?” remembers a scholar. “And she told me, it’s very simple, it’s a human face.” The signature tones – termed “Schubert red” and “Schubert blue” by peers – matched the precise colors used for drawing neck vasculature in anatomy books for a surgical anatomy textbook utilized in medical faculties across Europe. “It became clear those hues emerged concurrently,” the explanation continues. The geometric abstractions were, in fact, highly stylised human bodies – painted while she worked on anatomical illustrations by day.

Embracing Ephemeral Elements

Towards the end of the seventies and start of the eighties, her creative approach changed once more. She initiated works using wood lashed with straps. She arranged collections of bone, petals, spices and ash on floors. When asked why she’d shifted to such organic materials, she expressed that the art world had become “barren theoretically”. She felt an urge to break boundaries – to work with actual decaying material as a response to art that had metaphorically withered.

One work from 1979, 100 Roses, featured her denuding a century of flowers. She braided the stems into round arrangements positioning the floral remnants in the center. When observed in a curatorial context, the work maintained its impact – the floral elements now totally preserved but miraculously intact. “The aroma remains,” a commentator notes. “The pigmentation survives.”

A Practitioner of Secrecy

“My aim is to remain enigmatic, to conceal my process,” the artist shared in late-life discussions. Secrecy was her strategy. On occasion, she displayed counterfeit pieces while hiding originals under her bed. She destroyed certain drawings, keeping merely autographed copies. Although she participated in global art events and gaining recognition as a trailblazer, she granted virtually no press access 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. Violence reached Zagreb itself. She reacted with a collection of assembled pieces. She adhered press images and headlines onto panels. She duplicated and expanded them. Then she obscured the surface with paint – dark stripes akin to product codes. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|