‘I had to plunge the knife into the canvas’: The artist Edita Schubert brandished her medical instrument like painters use a brush.

Edita Schubert lived a double life. Throughout a career lasting over thirty years, the late Croatian artist worked at the Anatomy Institute at the medical school of the University of Zagreb, carefully sketching human anatomical specimens for medical reference books. In her studio, she produced art that eluded all labels – often using the very same tools.

“She was producing these really precise, technical illustrations which were used in medical textbooks,” says a curator of a new retrospective of her artistic output. “She was right in the middle of that practice … She showed no hesitation in the presence of dissections.” Her anatomical drawings, observes a arts scholar, are still published in handbooks for medical students to this day in Croatia.

Where Two Realms Converged

A split career path was not rare for artists from Yugoslavia, who seldom could rely on art sales. Yet, the fusion of these two domains was distinctive. The scalpels she used to make clean incisions in cadavers were transformed into tools for cutting fabric. Adhesive tape intended for bandages bound her fragmented pieces. Laboratory tubes commonly used for samples evolved into receptacles for her personal history.

An Artistic Restlessness

In the early 1970s, Schubert was still creating within the limits of classic art. She produced meticulous, hyperrealistic still lifes in paints and mediums of candies and condiment containers. But frustration had been building since her student days. During her time at the Zagreb art school, the curriculum mandated life drawing. “I needed to drive the blade into the painting, it genuinely irritated me, that tight canvas where I was expected to express myself,” she once explained to a scholar, in a seldom-granted conversation. “I stabbed the knife into the canvas instead of the brush.”

Where Anatomical Practice Meets Creation

That year, this desire became a concrete action. The artist created eleven sizable paintings. She painted each one a blue monochrome then using an anatomical scalpel and making hundreds of deliberate, precise cuts. Subsequently, she turned back the cut material to reveal its reverse, fashioning artworks catalogued with scientific detail. 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 inserted her features, hair, and digits through the openings, transforming her physical self into creative matter.

“Absolutely, my work possesses a dissective quality … dissection like an evening nude,” she responded to inquiries about the pieces. According to a trusted associate and academic, this explanation was a key insight – a glimpse into the mind of an elusive figure.

Two Lives, Deeply Connected

Croatian critics have tended to treat the artist's dual roles as completely distinct: the radical innovator in one corner, the technical draftsman funding her life in the other. “I have always believed that those two personalities were deeply, deeply connected,” states a scholar. “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 through works that, at first glance, seem entirely abstract. Around 1985, Schubert produced a series of geometric paintings – trapeziums, as they came to be known. Yugoslav critics lumped them into the fashionable neo-geo movement. Yet, the actual inspiration was found subsequently, while examining her personal papers.

“I asked her, how do you produce the trapeziums?” remembers a scholar. “She explained simply: they represent a human face.” The distinctive hues – what colleagues called “Schubert red” and “Schubert blue” – were identical tints she’d been using to illustrate the two main arteries of the neck in a manual for surgical anatomy employed throughout European medical schools. “It became clear those hues emerged concurrently,” the explanation continues. The geometric abstractions were, in fact, highly stylised human bodies – created concurrently with her daytime medical drawing.

Embracing Ephemeral Elements

During the transition into the 1980s, the artist's work shifted direction again. She began creating installations from branches bound with leather. She positioned gatherings of osseous material, floral remains, seasonings and cinders. Inquired regarding the change to ephemeral components, she expressed that the art world had become “barren theoretically”. She felt compelled to transgress – to engage with truly ephemeral substances as an answer to conceptually sterile work.

One work from 1979, 100 Roses, featured her denuding a century of flowers. She wove the stems into circles on the ground with the leaves and petals arranged inside. Upon being viewed while organizing a show, the piece retained its potency – the leaves and petals now completely dried out though wonderfully undamaged. “You can still smell the roses,” a viewer remarks. “The hue has endured.”

An Elusive Creative Force

“My aim is to remain enigmatic, to conceal my process,” the artist shared in late-life discussions. Obscurity was her technique. On occasion, she displayed counterfeit pieces concealing genuine artworks beneath her bed. She eradicated specific works, 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. A present retrospective marks her first significant external showcase.

Addressing the Trauma of Battle

Then came the 1990s, and 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 painted over everything in acrylic – dark stripes akin to product codes. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|