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

Edita Schubert led a dual existence. Over a period spanning thirty years, the artist from Croatia worked at the Department of Anatomy at the University of Zagreb’s medical faculty, carefully sketching cadavers for study for surgical textbooks. Within her artistic workspace, she made art that resisted every attempt at categorisation – frequently employing the identical instruments.

“She created these highly accurate, technical drawings which were used in anatomy guides,” says a director of a current show of the artist's oeuvre. “She was deeply immersed in that work … She showed no hesitation in the presence of dissections.” Her anatomical drawings, notes a exhibition curator, are continually used in textbooks for medical students currently in Croatia.

The Intermingling of Dual Vocations

Schubert’s dual vocation wasn’t unusual 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 became instruments for slicing canvas. Surgical tape designed for medical use bound her fragmented pieces. Glass vials usually meant for scientific specimens became vessels for her autobiography.

A Frustration That Cut Deep

During the beginning of the 1970s, Schubert was still creating within the limits of classic art. Her work included detailed, photorealistic compositions in paints and mediums of candies and tabletop items. However, discontent had been growing since her academy years. At Zagreb’s Academy of Fine Arts, the curriculum mandated life drawing. “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 later told an art historian, among the rare individuals she spoke with. “I used the knife to pierce the canvas, not a paintbrush.”

The Act of Dissection Becomes Art

That year, this desire became a concrete action. She made eleven big pieces. She painted each one a blue monochrome before taking a medical scalpel and making hundreds of deliberate, precise cuts. Subsequently, she turned back the cut material to expose the underside, fashioning artworks catalogued with scientific detail. Marking each with a date highlighted their status as performances. In a photographic series from that year, entitled Self-Portrait Behind a Perforated Canvas, 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,” she responded to inquiries about the pieces. According to a trusted associate and academic, this statement was illuminating – a clue from an artist who rarely explained herself.

Separate Careers, Intertwined Roots

Art commentators in Croatia often viewed Schubert’s two lives as entirely separate: the pioneering creator in one sphere, the anatomical artist supporting herself separately. “I have always believed that her dual selves were intimately linked,” notes a close friend. “It's impossible to spend 35 years at the Anatomy Institute daily for hours on end and remain untouched by the environment.”

Medical Undercurrents in Abstract Forms

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, the artist created a group of shaped canvases – trapezoidal forms, as they were later termed. Art writers grouped them with the popular geometric abstraction trend. But the truth was discovered only years later, during an archival review of her possessions.

“I asked her, how do you produce the trapeziums?” recalls a friend. “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 – were identical tints she’d been using to illustrate the two main arteries of the neck for a surgical anatomy textbook used across European medical faculties. “The connection was that both colors surfaced simultaneously,” the narrative adds. The shaped canvases were essentially distilled anatomical studies – executed alongside her daily technical illustration work.

A Turn Towards the Organic

During the transition into the 1980s, Schubert’s practice took another turn. She initiated works using wood lashed with straps. 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 utilize genuinely perishable matter as a response to art that had metaphorically withered.

One work from 1979, 100 Roses, featured her denuding a century of flowers. She intertwined the stalks into circular forms placing the foliage and petals within. When encountered during exhibition preparation, the piece retained its potency – the floral elements now totally preserved though wonderfully undamaged. “The aroma remains,” a commentator notes. “The pigmentation survives.”

An Elusive Creative Force

“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 while hiding originals under her bed. She eliminated select sketches, only retaining signed reproductions. Even with showings at prestigious exhibitions and being celebrated as a pioneering figure, she gave almost no interviews and her work remained largely unknown outside her region. A present retrospective marks her first significant external showcase.

Addressing the Trauma of Battle

Subsequently, the nineties dawned with the outbreak of conflict. Violence reached Zagreb itself. Schubert responded with a series of collages. She pasted newspaper photographs and text directly on to board. She reproduced and magnified 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|