‘I had to plunge the knife into the canvas’: The artist Edita Schubert brandished her medical instrument like other artists wield a brush.

The life of Edita Schubert was one of two distinct halves. For more than three decades, the late Croatian artist worked at the Institute of Anatomy at the Zagreb University’s faculty of medicine, meticulously drawing cadavers for study for textbooks for surgeons. In her studio, she created work that defied simple classification – often using the very same tools.

“She was producing these really precise, technical illustrations which were used in anatomy guides,” explains a organizer of a fresh exhibition of her artistic output. “She was right in the middle of that practice … She was totally unfazed about being in dissections.” Her anatomical drawings, observes a arts scholar, are still published in handbooks for anatomy students currently in Croatia.

Where Two Realms Converged

A split career path was not rare for Yugoslav artists, who often lacked a viable art market. Yet, the fusion of these two domains was distinctive. The medical knives for anatomical dissection turned into devices for perforating paintings. Surgical tape designed for medical use bound her fragmented pieces. The test tubes typically reserved for laboratory samples evolved into receptacles for her personal history.

An Artistic Restlessness

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 sweets and tabletop items. 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 truly frustrated me, that stretched surface I was forced to communicate upon,” she confided in a researcher, in a seldom-granted conversation. “I used the knife to pierce the canvas, not a paintbrush.”

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. Afterwards, she peeled back the severed canvas to show the backside, fashioning artworks catalogued with scientific detail. 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 pushed her face, hair, and fingers through the perforations, turning her own body into artistic material.

“Absolutely, my work possesses a dissective quality … dissection like an evening nude,” she responded to inquiries about the pieces. According to a trusted associate and academic, this was a revelation – a hint from a creator who seldom offered commentary.

A Dual Existence, Inextricably Linked

Analysts frequently presented her twin professions as wholly divided: the pioneering creator in one sphere, the medical illustrator who paid the bills on the other. “My opinion since then has been that her dual selves were intimately linked,” states a scholar. “It's impossible to spend 35 years at the Anatomy Institute from eight in the morning until three in the afternoon without being affected by the surroundings.”

Anatomical Echoes in Geometric Shapes

What makes a current exhibition particularly revelatory is how it traces these medical undercurrents in pieces that initially appear purely non-representational. In the mid-1980s, Schubert produced a series of geometric paintings – trapeziums, as they came to be known. Yugoslav critics lumped them into the fashionable neo-geo movement. Yet, the actual inspiration was found subsequently, while examining her personal papers.

“The question was posed: how are these forms made?” recalls a friend. “Her response was straightforward: it's a human face.” Those characteristic colours – what colleagues called “Schubert red” and “Schubert blue” – were the exact shades she’d been using to illustrate the two main arteries of the neck for a surgical anatomy textbook employed throughout European medical schools. “The connection was that both colors surfaced simultaneously,” the account notes. The angular paintings were actually abstracted human forms – painted while she worked on anatomical illustrations by day.

A Turn Towards the Organic

Towards the end of the seventies and start of the eighties, the artist's work shifted direction again. She started making assemblages from twigs secured with hide. She positioned gatherings of osseous material, floral remains, seasonings and cinders. Questioned about the move to natural substances, Schubert explained that art “was completely desiccated in the concept”. She was driven to cross lines – to work with actual decaying material 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 positioning the floral remnants in the center. Upon being viewed while organizing a show, the work maintained its impact – the floral elements now totally preserved though wonderfully undamaged. “The scent of roses persists,” one observer marvels. “The colour is still there.”

An Elusive Creative Force

“I always want to be mysterious, not to reveal what I’m doing,” she revealed in terminal-year interviews. Obscurity was her technique. On occasion, she displayed counterfeit pieces stashing authentic works out of sight. She destroyed certain drawings, keeping merely autographed copies. Despite exhibiting at major international biennales and gaining recognition as a trailblazer, she gave almost no interviews and her work remained largely unknown outside her region. 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. 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. Subsequently, she overpainted all elements – dark stripes akin to product codes. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|