‘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 esteemed Croatian creator was employed by the Institute of Anatomy at the Zagreb University’s faculty of medicine, precisely illustrating cadavers for study for textbooks for surgeons. Within her artistic workspace, 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 surgical handbooks,” says a curator of a new retrospective of the artist's oeuvre. “She was completely central to that discipline … She was entirely comfortable in the dissection room.” These detailed anatomical studies, notes a exhibition curator, are still featured in manuals for anatomy students in Croatia today.

The Bleeding of Two Worlds

Having two professional lives was not uncommon for artists from Yugoslavia, who seldom could rely on art sales. But the way these two worlds bled into each other was. The scalpels she used to make clean incisions in cadavers turned into devices for perforating paintings. The medical tape meant for wound dressing secured her sliced creations. The test tubes typically reserved for laboratory samples transformed into containers for her life story.

An Artistic Restlessness

During the beginning of the 1970s, Schubert was still working within the confines of traditional painting. She produced meticulous, hyperrealistic still lifes in oil and acrylic of confectionery and condiment containers. However, discontent had been growing since her academy years. While studying at the fine arts academy in Zagreb, the curriculum mandated life drawing. “I was compelled to stab the knife through the fabric, it truly frustrated me, that taut surface on which I had to talk about something,” she once explained to a scholar, in a seldom-granted conversation. “I stabbed the knife into the canvas instead of the brush.”

Where Anatomical Practice Meets Creation

In 1977, that urge took literal form. The artist created eleven sizable paintings. She painted each one a blue monochrome before taking a medical scalpel and performing countless measured, exact slices. Subsequently, she turned back the cut material to show the backside, creating works she documented with forensic precision. She dated each one to underscore that they were actions. In a photographic series from that year, called Self-Portrait With a Perforated Work, she pushed her face, hair, and fingers through the perforations, turning her own body into artistic material.

“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.

Separate Careers, Intertwined Roots

Croatian critics have tended to treat Schubert’s two lives as entirely separate: the pioneering creator in one sphere, the anatomical artist supporting herself separately. “My perspective is that her dual selves were intimately linked,” states a scholar. “You can’t work for 35 years in the Institute of Anatomy from early morning to mid-afternoon and remain untouched by the environment.”

Biological Inspirations Beneath the Surface

The revelatory nature of a present showcase is how it traces these medical undercurrents within creations that superficially look completely abstract. During the middle of the 1980s, she made a collection of angular works – geometric shapes, subsequently labeled. Contemporary critics categorized them under the trendy neo-geo label. However, the reality was uncovered much later, during an archival review of her possessions.

“I asked her, how do you produce the trapeziums?” remembers a scholar. “And she told me, it’s very simple, it’s a human face.” The distinctive hues – known among associates as her personal red and blue – matched the precise colors employed to depict cervical arteries in medical texts in a manual for surgical anatomy utilized in medical faculties across Europe. “It became clear those hues emerged concurrently,” the explanation continues. The geometric abstractions were, in fact, highly stylised human bodies – painted while she worked on anatomical illustrations by day.

Shifting to Natural Materials

During the transition into the 1980s, her creative approach changed once more. She started making assemblages from twigs secured with hide. She positioned gatherings of osseous material, floral remains, seasonings and cinders. When asked why she’d shifted to such organic materials, Schubert explained that art “was completely desiccated in the concept”. She felt compelled to transgress – to work with actual decaying material as a response to art that had metaphorically withered.

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. “You can still smell the roses,” one observer marvels. “The colour is still there.”

An Elusive Creative Force

“I prefer to stay cryptic, to hide my intentions,” Schubert confided during one of her final conversations. Obscurity was her technique. She would sometimes exhibit fake works stashing authentic works out of sight. She destroyed certain drawings, keeping merely autographed copies. Even with showings at prestigious exhibitions and being celebrated as a pioneering figure, she granted virtually no press access and her output stayed mostly obscure internationally. A present retrospective marks her first significant external showcase.

Confronting the Violence of War

The 1990s arrived, bringing the Yugoslav Wars. War came to her city. She reacted with a collection of assembled pieces. She pasted newspaper photographs and text directly on to board. She duplicated and expanded them. Then she obscured the surface with paint – rectangular forms reminiscent of scanning lines. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|