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

The life of Edita Schubert was one of two distinct halves. For more than three decades, the artist from Croatia worked at the Anatomy Institute at the University of Zagreb’s medical faculty, meticulously drawing dissected human bodies for medical reference books. In her studio, 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 medical textbooks,” notes a director of a current show of her artistic output. “She was deeply immersed in that work … She was totally unfazed about being in dissections.” These detailed anatomical studies, notes a exhibition curator, are still featured in manuals for anatomy students currently in Croatia.

Where Two Realms Converged

Having two professional lives was not uncommon 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 turned into devices for perforating paintings. Adhesive tape intended for bandages bound her fragmented pieces. Glass vials usually meant for scientific specimens became vessels for her autobiography.

A Creative Urge

During the beginning of the 1970s, Schubert was still creating within the limits of classic art. Her work included detailed, photorealistic compositions in acrylic and oil paints of sweets and tabletop items. But frustration had been building since her student days. At Zagreb’s Academy of Fine Arts, she’d been forced to paint nudes. “I was compelled to stab the knife through the fabric, it genuinely irritated me, that taut surface on which I had to talk about something,” she later told an art historian, in a seldom-granted conversation. “I thrust the blade into the painting in place of a brush.”

The Act of Dissection Becomes Art

In 1977, that urge took literal form. Schubert produced eleven large canvases. She painted each one a blue monochrome prior to picking up a surgical blade and executing numerous intentional, accurate incisions. She then folded back the sliced fabric to reveal its reverse, producing pieces recorded with clinical accuracy. She dated each one to underscore that they were actions. 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, turning her own body into artistic material.

“Yes, all my art has a character of dissection … dissection akin to a life study,” she responded to inquiries about the pieces. 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 experimental avant garde artist on one side, the technical draftsman funding her life in the other. “My opinion since then has been that these two identities were profoundly intertwined,” explains a confidant. “It's impossible to spend 35 years at the Anatomy Institute 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 how it maps these clinical themes within creations that superficially look completely abstract. During the middle of the 1980s, 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. However, the reality was uncovered much later, when cataloguing Schubert’s estate.

“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 signature tones – known among associates as her personal red and blue – were identical tints employed to depict cervical arteries in medical texts within a reference book for surgeons employed throughout European medical schools. “The connection was that both colors surfaced simultaneously,” the narrative adds. The shaped canvases were essentially distilled anatomical studies – painted while she worked on anatomical illustrations by day.

Embracing Ephemeral Elements

Towards the end of the seventies and start of the eighties, 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. Questioned about the move to natural substances, the artist stated that contemporary art had “dried up intellectually”. She felt an urge to break boundaries – to work with actual decaying material as an answer to conceptually sterile work.

An artwork dating to 1979, One Hundred Roses, featured her denuding a century of flowers. She braided the stems into round arrangements with the leaves and petals arranged inside. When encountered during exhibition preparation, the piece retained its potency – the floral elements now totally preserved but miraculously intact. “You can still smell the roses,” a viewer remarks. “The colour is still there.”

An Elusive Creative Force

“I always want to be mysterious, not to reveal what I’m doing,” she revealed in terminal-year interviews. Obscurity was her technique. She would sometimes exhibit fake works stashing authentic works out of sight. She destroyed certain drawings, leaving only signed photocopies in their place. Although she participated in global art events and gaining recognition as a trailblazer, she conducted hardly any media talks 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

The 1990s arrived, bringing the Yugoslav Wars. Violence reached Zagreb itself. The artist answered with a group of mixed-media works. She glued journalistic imagery and type onto surfaces. She reproduced and magnified them. Then she painted over everything in acrylic – dark stripes akin to product codes. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|