‘I felt forced to stab the knife through the canvas’: Edita Schubert used her surgical blade like creatives handle a paintbrush.

Edita Schubert lived a double life. For more than three decades, the late Croatian artist was employed by the Anatomy Institute at the Zagreb University’s faculty of medicine, precisely illustrating human anatomical specimens for textbooks for surgeons. In her studio, she made art that resisted every attempt at categorisation – often using the very same tools.

“She was producing these really precise, technical illustrations which were used in surgical handbooks,” notes a organizer of a fresh exhibition of Schubert’s work. “She was completely central to that discipline … She was entirely comfortable in the dissection room.” Her illustrations of human anatomy, notes a museum curator, are continually used in textbooks for surgical trainees currently in Croatia.

The Bleeding of Two Worlds

A split career path was not rare for creatives in the former Yugoslavia, who seldom could rely on art sales. Yet, the fusion of these two domains was distinctive. The surgical blades for precise cuts on bodies were transformed into tools for cutting fabric. Adhesive tape intended for bandages held her perforated artworks together. Laboratory tubes commonly used for samples evolved into receptacles for her personal history.

A Creative Urge

In the early 1970s, Schubert was still working within the confines of traditional painting. Her work included detailed, photorealistic compositions in oil and acrylic of sweets and salt and sugar shakers. But frustration had been building since her student days. While studying at the fine arts academy in Zagreb, 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, in a seldom-granted conversation. “I stabbed the knife into the canvas instead of the brush.”

The Act of Dissection Becomes Art

In 1977, that urge took literal form. The artist created eleven sizable paintings. She painted each one a blue monochrome prior to picking up a surgical blade and making hundreds of deliberate, precise cuts. Afterwards, she peeled back the severed canvas to show the backside, fashioning artworks catalogued with scientific detail. She timestamped each to emphasize their nature as events. Through a set of photos created in 1977, titled Self-Portrait Through a Sliced Painting, she pressed her visage, locks, and hands into the cuts, turning her own body into artistic material.

“Absolutely, my work possesses a dissective quality … dissection like an evening nude,” the artist replied when asked about their meaning. For a close friend and scholar, this statement was illuminating – a hint from a creator who seldom offered commentary.

Two Lives, Deeply Connected

Analysts frequently presented her twin professions as wholly divided: the radical innovator in one corner, the anatomical artist supporting herself separately. “My opinion since then has been that her dual selves were intimately linked,” notes a close friend. “It's impossible to spend 35 years at the Anatomy Institute from early morning to mid-afternoon and remain untouched by the environment.”

Medical Undercurrents in Abstract Forms

What makes a current exhibition particularly revelatory is the way it follows these anatomical influences through works that, at first glance, seem entirely abstract. During the middle of the 1980s, Schubert produced a series of geometric paintings – geometric shapes, subsequently labeled. Art writers grouped them with the popular geometric abstraction trend. But the truth was discovered only years later, while examining her personal papers.

“I inquired, how are these shapes created?” recalls a friend. “And she told me, it’s very simple, it’s a human face.” The signature tones – what colleagues called “Schubert red” and “Schubert blue” – matched the precise colors she’d been using to illustrate the two main arteries of the neck for a surgical anatomy textbook utilized in medical faculties across Europe. “I realised that those two colours appeared at the same time,” the explanation continues. The geometric abstractions were, in fact, highly stylised human bodies – created concurrently with her daytime medical drawing.

Shifting to Natural Materials

In the late 70s and early 80s, the artist's work shifted direction again. She initiated works using wood lashed with straps. She positioned gatherings of osseous material, floral remains, seasonings and cinders. 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 as a response to art that had metaphorically withered.

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 piece retained its potency – the organic matter now fully desiccated yet astonishingly whole. “The scent of roses persists,” a viewer remarks. “The hue has endured.”

An Elusive Creative Force

“I always want to be mysterious, not to reveal what I’m doing,” the artist shared in late-life discussions. Mystery was her method. On occasion, she displayed counterfeit pieces stashing authentic works out of sight. She eliminated select sketches, keeping merely autographed copies. Despite exhibiting at major international biennales and receiving acclaim as an innovator, she granted virtually no press access and her work remained largely unknown outside her region. 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. War came to her city. She reacted with a collection of assembled pieces. She adhered press images and headlines onto panels. She reproduced and magnified them. Then she obscured the surface with paint – black bars resembling barcodes. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|