‘I was compelled to drive the blade into the canvas’: Edita Schubert wielded her scalpel like painters use a brush.

Edita Schubert lived a double life. Over a period spanning thirty years, the artist from Croatia was employed by the Institute of Anatomy at the University of Zagreb’s medical faculty, precisely illustrating human anatomical specimens for textbooks for surgeons. Within her artistic workspace, she created work that defied simple classification – regularly utilizing the exact implements.

“She was producing these really precise, technical illustrations which were used in medical textbooks,” says a organizer of a fresh exhibition of Schubert’s work. “She was right in the middle of that practice … She was totally unfazed about being in dissections.” Her anatomical drawings, observes a museum curator, are continually used in textbooks for anatomy students in Croatia today.

The Intermingling of Dual Vocations

Having two professional lives was not uncommon for creatives in the former Yugoslavia, who seldom could rely on art sales. Yet, the fusion of these two domains was distinctive. The medical knives for anatomical dissection were transformed into tools for cutting fabric. Adhesive tape intended for bandages bound her fragmented pieces. Laboratory tubes commonly used for samples became vessels for her autobiography.

A Frustration That Cut Deep

In the early 1970s, Schubert was initially operating within conventional painting boundaries. Her work included detailed, photorealistic compositions in acrylic and oil paints of sweets and tabletop items. However, discontent had been growing since her academy years. During her time at the Zagreb art school, she was required to depict nude figures. “I needed to drive the blade into the painting, it genuinely irritated me, that stretched surface I was forced to communicate upon,” she once explained to a scholar, among the rare individuals she spoke with. “I stabbed the knife into the canvas instead of the brush.”

Where Anatomical Practice Meets Creation

That year, this desire became a concrete action. She made eleven big pieces. Each was coated in a single shade of blue prior to picking up a surgical blade and executing numerous intentional, accurate incisions. Subsequently, she turned back the cut material to expose the underside, creating works she documented with forensic precision. Marking each with a date highlighted their status as performances. In a photographic series from that year, 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 like an evening nude,” she responded to inquiries about the pieces. For an intimate confidant and researcher, this statement was illuminating – a hint from a creator who seldom offered commentary.

A Dual Existence, Inextricably Linked

Croatian critics have tended to treat the artist's dual roles as completely distinct: the experimental avant garde artist on one side, the medical illustrator who paid the bills on the other. “My perspective is that those two personalities were deeply, deeply connected,” notes a close friend. “One cannot be employed for three decades in an anatomy department daily for hours on end without being affected by the surroundings.”

Biological Inspirations Beneath the Surface

What makes a current exhibition particularly revelatory is the way it follows these anatomical influences in pieces that initially appear purely non-representational. During the middle of the 1980s, the artist created a group of shaped canvases – geometric shapes, subsequently labeled. Contemporary critics categorized them under the trendy neo-geo label. Yet, the actual inspiration was found subsequently, when cataloguing Schubert’s estate.

“I asked her, how do you produce the trapeziums?” recalls a friend. “Her response was straightforward: it's a human face.” Those characteristic colours – known among associates as her personal red and blue – were identical tints employed to depict cervical arteries in medical texts in a manual for surgical anatomy used across European medical faculties. “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

Towards the end of the seventies and start of the eighties, her creative approach changed once more. She started making assemblages from twigs secured with hide. She arranged collections of bone, petals, spices and ash on floors. When asked why she’d shifted to such organic materials, the artist stated that contemporary art had “dried up intellectually”. She felt compelled to transgress – to engage with truly ephemeral substances as a response to art that had metaphorically withered.

A 1979 piece entitled 100 Roses, featured her denuding a century of flowers. She braided the stems into round arrangements placing the foliage and petals within. Upon being viewed while organizing a show, it still held its power – the organic matter now fully desiccated but miraculously intact. “The aroma remains,” a viewer remarks. “The colour is still there.”

The Artist of Mystery

“My aim is to remain enigmatic, to conceal my process,” Schubert confided during one of her final conversations. Obscurity was her technique. At times, she showed inauthentic creations stashing authentic works out of sight. She eradicated specific works, keeping merely autographed copies. Although she participated in global art events and gaining recognition as a trailblazer, she gave almost no interviews and her art was predominantly unrecognized abroad. An ongoing display represents the initial large-scale presentation of her work internationally.

Responding to the Horrors of Conflict

Then came the 1990s, and the Yugoslav Wars. Violence reached Zagreb itself. She reacted with a collection of assembled pieces. 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|