‘I was compelled to drive the blade into the canvas’: The artist Edita Schubert wielded her scalpel like creatives handle a paintbrush.

Edita Schubert lived a double life. For more than three decades, the late Croatian artist held a position at the Anatomy Institute at the Zagreb University’s faculty of medicine, carefully sketching cadavers for study for textbooks for surgeons. Within her artistic workspace, she produced art that eluded all labels – frequently employing the identical instruments.

“Her work involved crafting these meticulous, technical diagrams which were used in medical textbooks,” explains a director of a current show of the artist's oeuvre. “She was deeply immersed in that work … She was totally unfazed about being in dissections.” Her anatomical drawings, comments a exhibition curator, are still published in handbooks for medical students in Croatia today.

Where Two Realms Converged

Schubert’s dual vocation wasn’t unusual for artists from Yugoslavia, who often lacked a viable art market. Yet, the fusion of these two domains was distinctive. The surgical blades for precise cuts on bodies became instruments for slicing canvas. Surgical tape designed for medical use held her perforated artworks together. Glass vials usually meant for scientific specimens evolved into receptacles for her personal history.

An Artistic Restlessness

During the beginning of the 1970s, Schubert was initially operating within conventional painting boundaries. She crafted precise, ultra-realistic arrangements in paints and mediums of confectionery and salt and sugar shakers. Yet, irritation had been festering since her training. While studying at the fine arts academy in Zagreb, she’d been forced to paint nudes. “I had to plunge the knife into the canvas, it simply got on my nerves, that tight canvas where I was expected to express myself,” she once explained to a scholar, in a seldom-granted conversation. “I thrust the blade into the painting in place of a brush.”

Where Anatomical Practice Meets Creation

That year, this desire became a concrete action. She made eleven big pieces. All were rendered in a uniform blue hue then using an anatomical scalpel and executing numerous intentional, accurate incisions. Subsequently, she turned back the cut material to show the backside, producing pieces recorded with clinical accuracy. Marking each with a date highlighted their status as performances. Through a set of photos created in 1977, entitled Self-Portrait Behind a Perforated Canvas, she inserted her features, hair, and digits through the openings, 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 a close friend and scholar, this explanation was a key insight – a glimpse into the mind of an elusive figure.

Separate Careers, Intertwined Roots

Analysts frequently presented the artist's dual roles as completely distinct: the pioneering creator in one sphere, the medical illustrator who paid the bills on the other. “My opinion since then has been that her dual selves were intimately linked,” states a scholar. “One cannot be employed for three decades in an anatomy department from early morning to mid-afternoon without being affected by the surroundings.”

Medical Undercurrents in Abstract Forms

What makes a current exhibition particularly revelatory is the way it follows these anatomical influences in pieces that initially appear purely non-representational. In the mid-1980s, she made a collection of angular works – trapeziums, as they came to be known. Art writers grouped them with the popular geometric abstraction trend. Yet, the actual inspiration was found subsequently, while examining her personal papers.

“The question was posed: how are these forms made?” states an associate. “And she told me, it’s very simple, it’s a human face.” The distinctive hues – termed “Schubert red” and “Schubert blue” by peers – were the exact shades used for drawing neck vasculature in anatomy books in a manual for surgical anatomy employed throughout European medical schools. “The connection was that both colors surfaced simultaneously,” the account notes. The angular paintings were actually abstracted human forms – created concurrently with her daytime medical drawing.

A Turn Towards the Organic

In the late 70s and early 80s, her creative approach changed once more. She began creating installations from branches bound with leather. She arranged collections of bone, petals, spices and ash on floors. Inquired regarding the change to ephemeral components, the artist stated that contemporary art had “dried up intellectually”. She was driven to cross lines – to utilize genuinely perishable matter in reaction to a creatively arid landscape.

One work from 1979, 100 Roses, saw her strip a hundred roses of their petals. She braided the stems into round arrangements 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 aroma remains,” a viewer remarks. “The hue has endured.”

An Elusive Creative Force

“I prefer to stay cryptic, to hide my intentions,” she revealed in terminal-year interviews. Mystery was her method. She would sometimes exhibit fake works while hiding originals under her bed. She destroyed certain drawings, keeping merely autographed copies. Despite exhibiting at major international biennales and receiving acclaim as an innovator, she gave almost no interviews and her work remained largely unknown outside her region. An ongoing display represents the initial large-scale presentation of her work internationally.

Confronting the Violence of War

Subsequently, the nineties dawned with the outbreak of conflict. War came to her city. Schubert responded with a series of collages. She adhered press images and headlines onto panels. She photocopied and enlarged them. Then she obscured the surface with paint – dark stripes akin to product codes. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|