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

The life of Edita Schubert was one of two distinct halves. For more than three decades, the late Croatian artist worked at the Department of Anatomy at the medical school of the University of Zagreb, carefully sketching human anatomical specimens for medical reference books. In her studio, she produced art that eluded all labels – 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 Schubert’s work. “She was completely central to that discipline … She was totally unfazed about being in dissections.” Her anatomical drawings, observes a museum curator, are still published in handbooks for medical students currently in Croatia.

The Intermingling of Dual Vocations

A split career path was not rare for artists from Yugoslavia, who often lacked a viable art market. But the way these two worlds bled into each other was. The surgical blades for precise cuts on bodies turned into devices for perforating paintings. Adhesive tape intended for bandages held her perforated artworks together. The test tubes typically reserved for laboratory samples became vessels for her autobiography.

A Creative Urge

In the early 1970s, Schubert was still creating within the limits of classic art. She crafted precise, ultra-realistic arrangements in oil and acrylic of candies and salt and sugar shakers. But frustration had been building since her student days. During her time at the Zagreb art school, the curriculum mandated life drawing. “I had to plunge the knife into the canvas, it truly frustrated me, that tight canvas where I was expected to express myself,” she once explained to a scholar, in a seldom-granted conversation. “I used the knife to pierce the canvas, not a paintbrush.”

Where Anatomical Practice Meets Creation

By 1977, this impulse manifested physically. Schubert produced eleven large canvases. She painted each one a blue monochrome before taking a medical scalpel and performing countless measured, exact slices. 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. Through a set of photos created in 1977, titled Self-Portrait Through a Sliced Painting, she inserted her features, hair, and digits through the openings, making her own form part of the artwork.

“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.

A Dual Existence, Inextricably Linked

Croatian critics have tended to treat her twin professions as wholly divided: the experimental avant garde artist on one side, the anatomical artist supporting herself separately. “My opinion since then has been that these two identities were profoundly intertwined,” explains a confidant. “You can’t work for 35 years in the Institute of Anatomy daily for hours on end without being affected by the surroundings.”

Anatomical Echoes in Geometric Shapes

The revelatory nature of a present showcase is how it maps these clinical themes through works that, at first glance, seem entirely abstract. Around 1985, the artist created a group of shaped canvases – trapezoidal forms, as they were later termed. Art writers grouped them with the popular geometric abstraction trend. 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.” The distinctive hues – known among associates as her personal red and blue – were identical tints used for drawing neck vasculature in anatomy books for a surgical anatomy textbook employed throughout European medical schools. “It became clear those hues emerged concurrently,” the narrative adds. The angular paintings were actually abstracted human forms – executed alongside her daily technical illustration work.

Shifting to Natural Materials

Towards the end of the seventies and start of the eighties, Schubert’s practice took another turn. She initiated works using wood lashed with straps. She positioned gatherings of osseous material, floral remains, seasonings and cinders. Questioned about the move to natural substances, she expressed that the art world had become “barren theoretically”. She felt an urge to break boundaries – 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 with the leaves and petals arranged inside. Upon being viewed while organizing a show, the work maintained its impact – the floral elements now totally preserved though wonderfully undamaged. “The aroma remains,” a viewer remarks. “The hue has endured.”

The Artist of Mystery

“I prefer to stay cryptic, to hide my intentions,” the artist shared in late-life discussions. Mystery was her method. At times, she showed inauthentic creations while hiding originals under her bed. She eliminated select sketches, only retaining signed reproductions. Although she participated in global art events and gaining recognition as a trailblazer, she gave almost no interviews and her work remained largely unknown outside her region. A current museum exhibition is her first major solo show outside her homeland.

Confronting the Violence of War

Subsequently, the nineties dawned with the outbreak of conflict. 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. 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|