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

Edita Schubert led a dual existence. Throughout a career lasting over thirty years, the late Croatian artist held a position at the Institute of Anatomy at the Zagreb University’s faculty of medicine, meticulously drawing human anatomical specimens for medical reference books. In her private atelier, she made art that resisted every attempt at categorisation – regularly utilizing the exact implements.

“She was producing these really precise, technical illustrations which were used in anatomy guides,” says a director of a current show of the artist's oeuvre. “She was right in the middle of that practice … She was entirely comfortable in the dissection room.” Her anatomical drawings, comments a exhibition curator, are still published in handbooks for anatomy students in Croatia today.

The Intermingling of Dual Vocations

A split career path was not rare for Yugoslav artists, 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. The medical tape meant for wound dressing secured her sliced creations. Glass vials usually meant for scientific specimens evolved into receptacles for her personal history.

A Creative Urge

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 sweets and salt and sugar shakers. However, discontent had been growing since her academy years. During her time at the Zagreb art school, she’d been forced to paint nudes. “I had to plunge the knife into the canvas, it genuinely irritated me, that taut surface on which I had to talk about something,” she confided in a researcher, one of the few people she ever granted an interview. “I stabbed the knife into the canvas instead of the brush.”

The Artistic Performance of Cutting

In 1977, that urge took literal form. Schubert produced eleven large canvases. She painted each one a blue monochrome before taking a medical scalpel and executing numerous intentional, accurate incisions. Subsequently, she turned back the cut material to expose the underside, producing pieces recorded with clinical accuracy. She timestamped each to emphasize their nature as events. 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, turning her own body into artistic material.

“Absolutely, my work possesses a dissective quality … anatomical analysis similar to figure drawing,” Schubert answered regarding the works' significance. For an intimate confidant and researcher, this statement was illuminating – a glimpse into the mind of an elusive figure.

Two Lives, Deeply Connected

Croatian critics have tended to treat Schubert’s two lives as entirely separate: the radical innovator in one corner, the anatomical artist supporting herself separately. “I have always believed that those two personalities were deeply, deeply connected,” explains a confidant. “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

A key insight from a ongoing display is the way it follows these anatomical influences within creations that superficially look completely abstract. Around 1985, Schubert produced a series of geometric paintings – geometric shapes, subsequently labeled. Contemporary critics categorized them under the trendy neo-geo label. But the truth was discovered only years later, during an archival review of her possessions.

“The question was posed: how are these forms made?” recalls a friend. “And she told me, it’s very simple, it’s a human face.” The signature tones – termed “Schubert red” and “Schubert blue” by peers – were identical tints she’d been using to illustrate the two main arteries of the neck within a reference book for surgeons used across European medical faculties. “It became clear those hues emerged concurrently,” the account notes. The angular paintings were actually abstracted human forms – created concurrently with her daytime medical drawing.

Shifting to Natural Materials

In the late 70s and early 80s, Schubert’s practice took another turn. She began creating installations from branches bound with leather. She arranged collections of bone, petals, spices and ash on floors. Questioned about the move to natural substances, Schubert explained that art “was completely desiccated in the concept”. She felt compelled to transgress – to work with actual decaying material as an answer to conceptually sterile work.

A 1979 piece entitled 100 Roses, saw her strip a hundred roses of their petals. She intertwined the stalks into circular forms placing the foliage and petals within. Upon being viewed while organizing a show, the piece retained its potency – the floral elements now totally preserved yet astonishingly whole. “The scent of roses persists,” one observer marvels. “The pigmentation survives.”

An Elusive Creative Force

“I always want to be mysterious, not to reveal what I’m doing,” Schubert confided during one of her final conversations. Obscurity was her technique. She would sometimes exhibit fake works concealing genuine artworks beneath her bed. She eradicated specific works, keeping merely autographed copies. Even with showings at prestigious exhibitions and receiving acclaim as an innovator, she gave almost no interviews and her output stayed mostly obscure internationally. A current museum exhibition is her first major solo show outside her homeland.

Confronting the Violence of War

Then came the 1990s, and the Yugoslav Wars. War came to her city. The artist answered with a group of mixed-media works. She pasted newspaper photographs and text directly on to board. She duplicated and expanded them. Then she obscured the surface with paint – black bars resembling barcodes. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|