‘I felt forced to stab the knife through the canvas’: Edita Schubert brandished her medical instrument like painters use a brush.

Edita Schubert lived a double life. Over a period spanning thirty years, the esteemed Croatian creator was employed by the Anatomy Institute at the medical school of the University of Zagreb, precisely illustrating dissected human bodies for medical reference books. In her studio, she created work that defied simple classification – regularly utilizing the exact implements.

“She was producing these really precise, technical illustrations which were used in surgical handbooks,” 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, comments a exhibition curator, are continually used in textbooks for surgical trainees in Croatia today.

Where Two Realms Converged

A split career path was not rare for creatives in the former Yugoslavia, who seldom could rely on art sales. However, the manner in which these spheres merged was unique. The medical knives for anatomical dissection turned into devices for perforating paintings. Surgical tape designed for medical use bound her fragmented pieces. Glass vials usually meant for scientific specimens transformed into containers for her life story.

A Frustration That Cut Deep

At the start of the seventies, Schubert was still working within the confines of traditional painting. Her work included detailed, photorealistic compositions in acrylic and oil paints of candies and salt and sugar shakers. Yet, irritation had been festering since her training. At Zagreb’s Academy of Fine Arts, she’d been forced to paint nudes. “I needed to drive the blade into the painting, it simply got on my nerves, that tight canvas where I was expected to express myself,” she confided in a researcher, among the rare individuals she spoke with. “I stabbed the knife into the canvas instead of the brush.”

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. She then folded back the sliced fabric to show the backside, 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, called Self-Portrait With a Perforated Work, she pressed her visage, locks, and hands into the cuts, transforming her physical self into creative matter.

“Yes, all my art has a character 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 hint from a creator who seldom offered commentary.

A Dual Existence, Inextricably Linked

Analysts frequently presented the artist's dual roles as completely distinct: the pioneering creator in one sphere, the technical draftsman funding her life in the other. “My opinion since then has been that these two identities were profoundly intertwined,” states a scholar. “One cannot be employed for three decades in an anatomy department from eight in the morning until three in the afternoon and not be influenced by what you see there.”

Biological Inspirations Beneath the Surface

A key insight from a ongoing display is the way it follows these anatomical influences through works that, at first glance, seem entirely abstract. Around 1985, she made a collection of angular works – geometric shapes, subsequently labeled. Yugoslav critics lumped them into the fashionable neo-geo movement. But the truth was discovered only years later, while examining her personal papers.

“I asked her, how do you produce the trapeziums?” recalls a friend. “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 within a reference book for surgeons used across European medical faculties. “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.

Shifting to Natural Materials

In the late 70s and early 80s, the artist's work shifted direction again. 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 was driven to cross lines – 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 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 yet astonishingly whole. “You can still smell the roses,” one observer marvels. “The hue has endured.”

The Artist of Mystery

“My aim is to remain enigmatic, to conceal my process,” she revealed in terminal-year interviews. Mystery was her method. On occasion, she displayed counterfeit pieces stashing authentic works out of sight. She destroyed certain drawings, only retaining signed reproductions. 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.

Addressing the Trauma of Battle

Then came the 1990s, and the Yugoslav Wars. Hostilities impacted the capital directly. She reacted with a collection of assembled pieces. She glued journalistic imagery and type onto surfaces. She duplicated and expanded them. Subsequently, she overpainted all elements – rectangular forms reminiscent of scanning lines. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|