‘I was compelled to drive the blade 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 artist from Croatia held a position at the Institute of Anatomy at the medical school of the University of Zagreb, meticulously drawing human anatomical specimens for medical reference books. In her studio, she made art that resisted every attempt at categorisation – often using the very same tools.

“Her work involved crafting these meticulous, technical diagrams which were used in anatomy guides,” says a director of a current show of her artistic output. “She was completely central to that discipline … She was entirely comfortable in the dissection room.” Her illustrations of human anatomy, notes a exhibition curator, are still featured in manuals for medical students currently in Croatia.

Where Two Realms Converged

A split career path was not rare for Yugoslav artists, who rarely had access to a commercial art market. Yet, the fusion of these two domains was distinctive. The scalpels she used to make clean incisions in cadavers became instruments for slicing canvas. Adhesive tape intended for bandages held her perforated artworks together. Glass vials usually meant for scientific specimens became vessels for her autobiography.

A Creative Urge

At the start of the seventies, Schubert was still working within the confines of traditional painting. She produced meticulous, hyperrealistic still lifes in paints and mediums of candies and condiment containers. 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 simply got on my nerves, that taut surface on which I had to talk about something,” she confided in a researcher, 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. The artist created eleven sizable paintings. All were rendered in a uniform blue hue before taking a medical scalpel and making hundreds of deliberate, precise cuts. Subsequently, she turned back the cut material to show the backside, creating works she documented with forensic precision. Marking each with a date highlighted their status as performances. In one 1977 series of photographs, called Self-Portrait With a Perforated Work, 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,” she responded to inquiries about the pieces. For an intimate confidant and researcher, this explanation was a key insight – a clue from an artist who rarely explained herself.

A Dual Existence, Inextricably Linked

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. “I have always believed 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 and not be influenced by what you see there.”

Medical Undercurrents in Abstract Forms

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, Schubert produced a series of geometric paintings – trapezoidal forms, as they were later termed. Art writers grouped them with the popular geometric abstraction trend. However, the reality was uncovered much later, during an archival review of her possessions.

“I inquired, how are these shapes created?” recalls a friend. “And she told me, it’s very simple, it’s a human face.” The signature tones – termed “Schubert red” and “Schubert blue” by peers – were the exact shades she’d been using to illustrate the two main arteries of the neck in a manual for surgical anatomy utilized in medical faculties across Europe. “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, her creative approach changed once more. She began creating installations from branches bound with leather. She composed displays of skeletal fragments, flower parts, herbs and soot. Inquired regarding the change to ephemeral components, the artist stated that contemporary art had “dried up intellectually”. She felt compelled to transgress – to work with actual decaying material in reaction to a creatively arid landscape.

A 1979 piece entitled 100 Roses, involved her removing petals from a hundred blooms. She wove the stems into circles on the ground placing the foliage and petals within. 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 prefer to stay cryptic, to hide my intentions,” the artist shared in late-life discussions. Secrecy was her strategy. On occasion, she displayed counterfeit pieces concealing genuine artworks beneath her bed. She eradicated specific works, leaving only signed photocopies in their place. Despite exhibiting at major international biennales and gaining recognition as a trailblazer, she gave almost no interviews and her art was predominantly unrecognized abroad. A current museum exhibition is her first major solo show outside her homeland.

Confronting the Violence of War

The 1990s arrived, bringing the Yugoslav Wars. War came to her city. The artist answered with a group of mixed-media works. She glued journalistic imagery and type onto surfaces. 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|