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

Edita Schubert led a dual existence. Over a period spanning thirty years, the late Croatian artist was employed by the Anatomy Institute at the medical school of the University of Zagreb, carefully sketching cadavers for study for medical reference books. In her private atelier, she created work that defied simple classification – often using the very same tools.

“She created these highly accurate, technical drawings which were used in anatomy guides,” notes a curator of a new retrospective of the artist's oeuvre. “She was right in the middle of that practice … She was entirely comfortable in the dissection room.” These detailed anatomical studies, notes a museum curator, are still published in handbooks for surgical trainees currently in Croatia.

The Bleeding of Two Worlds

Schubert’s dual vocation wasn’t unusual for Yugoslav artists, who rarely had access to a commercial art market. Yet, the fusion of these two domains was distinctive. The medical knives for anatomical dissection were transformed into tools for cutting fabric. The medical tape meant for wound dressing held her perforated artworks together. Laboratory tubes commonly used for samples evolved into receptacles for her personal history.

A Frustration That Cut Deep

In the early 1970s, Schubert was initially operating within conventional painting boundaries. She produced meticulous, hyperrealistic still lifes in paints and mediums of candies and salt and sugar shakers. However, discontent had been growing since her academy years. During her time at the Zagreb art school, she was required to depict nude figures. “I had to plunge the knife into the canvas, it simply got on my nerves, that stretched surface I was forced to communicate upon,” she once explained to a scholar, among the rare individuals she spoke with. “I stabbed the knife into the canvas instead of the brush.”

The Artistic Performance of Cutting

By 1977, this impulse manifested physically. Schubert produced eleven large canvases. She painted each one a blue monochrome then using an anatomical scalpel and making hundreds of deliberate, precise cuts. She then folded back the sliced fabric to reveal its reverse, fashioning artworks catalogued with scientific detail. She timestamped each to emphasize their nature as events. In one 1977 series of photographs, entitled Self-Portrait Behind a Perforated Canvas, she pushed her face, hair, and fingers through the perforations, making her own form part of the artwork.

“Indeed, my entire oeuvre carries a sense of dissection … anatomical analysis similar to figure drawing,” Schubert answered regarding the works' significance. For an intimate confidant and researcher, this explanation was a key insight – a glimpse into the mind of an elusive figure.

A Dual Existence, Inextricably Linked

Art commentators in Croatia often viewed the artist's dual roles as completely distinct: the experimental avant garde artist on one side, the technical draftsman funding her life in the other. “My opinion since then has been that her dual selves were intimately linked,” explains a confidant. “It's impossible to spend 35 years at the Anatomy Institute daily for hours on end without being affected by the surroundings.”

Biological Inspirations Beneath the Surface

A key insight from a ongoing display is how it maps these clinical themes within creations that superficially look completely abstract. During the middle of the 1980s, Schubert produced a series of geometric paintings – trapezoidal forms, as they were later termed. Contemporary critics categorized them under the trendy neo-geo label. However, the reality was uncovered much later, when cataloguing Schubert’s estate.

“I asked her, how do you produce the trapeziums?” states an associate. “She explained simply: they represent a human face.” The distinctive hues – known among associates as her personal red and blue – matched the precise colors she’d been using to illustrate the two main arteries of the neck for a surgical anatomy textbook employed throughout European medical schools. “I realised that those two colours appeared at the same time,” the account notes. The angular paintings were actually abstracted human forms – executed alongside her daily technical illustration work.

Embracing Ephemeral Elements

During the transition into the 1980s, 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. Inquired regarding the change to ephemeral components, Schubert explained that art “was completely desiccated in the concept”. She felt an urge to break boundaries – to utilize genuinely perishable matter in reaction to a creatively arid landscape.

One work from 1979, 100 Roses, featured her denuding a century of flowers. She braided the stems into round arrangements placing the foliage and petals within. When encountered during exhibition preparation, the piece retained its potency – the organic matter now fully desiccated but miraculously intact. “You can still smell the roses,” one observer marvels. “The pigmentation survives.”

A Practitioner of Secrecy

“I prefer to stay cryptic, to hide my intentions,” the artist shared in late-life discussions. Obscurity was her technique. At times, she showed inauthentic creations concealing genuine artworks beneath her bed. She eradicated specific works, keeping merely autographed copies. Despite exhibiting at major international biennales and being celebrated as a pioneering figure, she gave almost no interviews and her output stayed mostly obscure internationally. A current museum exhibition is her first major solo show outside her homeland.

Addressing the Trauma of Battle

The 1990s arrived, bringing the Yugoslav Wars. Hostilities impacted the capital directly. The artist answered with a group of mixed-media works. She pasted newspaper photographs and text directly on to board. She photocopied and enlarged them. Subsequently, she overpainted all elements – black bars resembling barcodes. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|