‘I felt forced to stab the knife through the canvas’: The artist Edita Schubert used her surgical blade like other artists wield a brush.

Edita Schubert led a dual existence. For more than three decades, the artist from Croatia worked at the Institute of Anatomy at the medical school of the University of Zagreb, meticulously drawing human anatomical specimens for surgical textbooks. Within her artistic workspace, 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 medical textbooks,” says a director of a current show of Schubert’s work. “She was deeply immersed in that work … She showed no hesitation in the presence of dissections.” These detailed anatomical studies, comments a exhibition curator, are still featured in manuals for medical students in Croatia today.

The Intermingling of Dual Vocations

Having two professional lives was not uncommon for creatives in the former Yugoslavia, who rarely had access to a commercial art market. But the way these two worlds bled into each other was. The scalpels she used to make clean incisions in cadavers became instruments for slicing canvas. The medical tape meant for wound dressing held her perforated artworks together. Laboratory tubes commonly used for samples transformed into containers for her life story.

An Artistic Restlessness

In the early 1970s, Schubert was still creating within the limits of classic art. Her work included detailed, photorealistic compositions in paints and mediums of candies and tabletop items. Yet, irritation had been festering since her training. During her time at the Zagreb art school, she was required to depict nude figures. “I was compelled to stab the knife through the fabric, it simply got on my nerves, that stretched surface I was forced to communicate upon,” she confided in a researcher, among the rare individuals she spoke with. “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 before taking a medical scalpel and performing countless measured, exact slices. Subsequently, she turned back the cut material to expose the underside, creating works she documented with forensic precision. She dated each one to underscore that they were actions. In a photographic series from that year, entitled Self-Portrait Behind a Perforated Canvas, she pushed her face, hair, and fingers through the perforations, making her own form part of the artwork.

“Indeed, my entire oeuvre carries a sense of dissection … anatomical analysis similar to figure drawing,” Schubert answered regarding the works' significance. According to a trusted associate and academic, this explanation was a key insight – a hint from a creator who seldom offered commentary.

Two Lives, Deeply Connected

Art commentators in Croatia often viewed 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. “I have always believed that her dual selves were intimately linked,” notes a close friend. “You can’t work for 35 years in the Institute of Anatomy from early morning to mid-afternoon without being affected by the surroundings.”

Medical Undercurrents in Abstract Forms

A key insight from a ongoing display is how it traces these medical undercurrents in pieces that initially appear purely non-representational. During the middle of the 1980s, she made a collection of angular works – trapeziums, as they came to be known. Contemporary critics categorized them under the trendy neo-geo label. However, the reality was uncovered much later, when cataloguing Schubert’s estate.

“I inquired, how are these shapes created?” states an associate. “She explained simply: they represent a human face.” The distinctive hues – known among associates as her personal red and blue – were identical tints she’d been using to illustrate the two main arteries of the neck for a surgical anatomy textbook utilized in medical faculties across Europe. “The connection was that both colors surfaced simultaneously,” the account notes. The shaped canvases were essentially distilled anatomical studies – created concurrently with her daytime medical drawing.

Embracing Ephemeral Elements

During the transition into the 1980s, her creative approach changed once more. She initiated works using wood lashed with straps. She composed displays of skeletal fragments, flower parts, herbs and soot. 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 utilize genuinely perishable matter as a response to art that had metaphorically withered.

A 1979 piece entitled 100 Roses, involved her removing petals from a hundred blooms. 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 floral elements now totally preserved though wonderfully undamaged. “The aroma remains,” one observer marvels. “The colour is still there.”

The Artist of Mystery

“I prefer to stay cryptic, to hide my intentions,” 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 eliminated select sketches, keeping merely autographed copies. Despite exhibiting at major international biennales and being celebrated as a pioneering figure, she gave almost no interviews and her work remained largely unknown outside her region. A current museum exhibition is her first major solo show outside her homeland.

Confronting the Violence of War

Subsequently, the nineties dawned with the outbreak of conflict. 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 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|