‘I was compelled to drive the blade into the canvas’: Edita Schubert brandished her medical instrument like painters use a brush.

Edita Schubert lived a double life. Over a period spanning thirty years, the late Croatian artist held a position at the Anatomy Institute at the Zagreb University’s faculty of medicine, carefully sketching human anatomical specimens for surgical textbooks. In her studio, she created work that defied simple classification – frequently employing the identical instruments.

“Her work involved crafting these meticulous, technical diagrams which were used in anatomy guides,” notes a director of a current show of her artistic output. “She was completely central to that discipline … She was totally unfazed about being in dissections.” Her illustrations of human anatomy, observes a exhibition curator, are continually used in textbooks for medical students in Croatia today.

The Intermingling of Dual Vocations

Having two professional lives was not uncommon for Yugoslav artists, who rarely had access to a commercial art market. Yet, the fusion of these two domains was distinctive. The scalpels she used to make clean incisions in cadavers became instruments for slicing canvas. The medical tape meant for wound dressing bound her fragmented pieces. Laboratory tubes commonly used for samples transformed into containers for her life story.

A Frustration That Cut Deep

During the beginning of the 1970s, Schubert was initially operating within conventional painting boundaries. Her work included detailed, photorealistic compositions in paints and mediums of sweets and tabletop items. However, discontent had been growing since her academy years. At Zagreb’s Academy of Fine Arts, the curriculum mandated life drawing. “I was compelled to stab the knife through the fabric, it truly frustrated me, that tight canvas where I was expected to express myself,” she once explained to a scholar, in a seldom-granted conversation. “I used the knife to pierce the canvas, not a paintbrush.”

Where Anatomical Practice Meets Creation

By 1977, this impulse manifested physically. The artist created eleven sizable paintings. All were rendered in a uniform blue hue before taking a medical scalpel and making hundreds of deliberate, precise cuts. Subsequently, she turned back the cut material to show the backside, producing pieces recorded with clinical accuracy. 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 pressed her visage, locks, and hands into the cuts, transforming her physical self into creative matter.

“Indeed, my entire oeuvre carries a sense of dissection … dissection akin to a life study,” Schubert answered regarding the works' significance. For an intimate confidant and researcher, this was a revelation – a clue from an artist who rarely explained herself.

Two Lives, Deeply Connected

Croatian critics have tended to treat 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 these two identities were profoundly intertwined,” explains a confidant. “One cannot be employed for three decades in an anatomy department 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 the way it follows these anatomical influences in pieces that initially appear purely non-representational. In the mid-1980s, Schubert produced a series of geometric paintings – trapezoidal forms, as they were later termed. Contemporary critics categorized them under the trendy neo-geo label. Yet, the actual inspiration was found subsequently, during an archival review of her possessions.

“The question was posed: how are these forms made?” recalls a friend. “She explained simply: they represent a human face.” The distinctive hues – known among associates as her personal red and blue – were identical tints used for drawing neck vasculature in anatomy books for a surgical anatomy textbook used across European medical faculties. “It became clear those hues emerged concurrently,” the narrative adds. The geometric abstractions were, in fact, highly stylised human bodies – created concurrently with her daytime medical drawing.

A Turn Towards the Organic

In the late 70s and early 80s, the artist's work shifted direction again. She started making assemblages from twigs secured with hide. She arranged collections of bone, petals, spices and ash on floors. When asked why she’d shifted to such organic materials, Schubert explained that art “was completely desiccated in the concept”. She felt compelled to transgress – to engage with truly ephemeral substances as a response to art that had metaphorically withered.

An artwork dating to 1979, One Hundred Roses, involved her removing petals from a hundred blooms. She intertwined the stalks into circular forms placing the foliage and petals within. When encountered during exhibition preparation, it still held its power – the organic matter now fully desiccated but miraculously intact. “The scent of roses persists,” a commentator notes. “The colour is still there.”

The Artist of Mystery

“I always want to be mysterious, not to reveal what I’m doing,” she revealed in terminal-year interviews. Mystery was her method. On occasion, she displayed counterfeit pieces concealing genuine artworks beneath her bed. She eradicated specific works, leaving only signed photocopies in their place. Even with showings at prestigious exhibitions and receiving acclaim as an innovator, she gave almost no interviews and her output stayed mostly obscure internationally. An ongoing display represents the initial large-scale presentation of her work internationally.

Responding to the Horrors of Conflict

Subsequently, the nineties dawned with the outbreak of conflict. War came to her city. She reacted with a collection of assembled pieces. She adhered press images and headlines onto panels. She photocopied and enlarged 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|