‘I had to plunge the knife into the canvas’: Edita Schubert brandished her medical instrument like other artists wield a brush.

Edita Schubert led a dual existence. Over a period spanning thirty years, the late Croatian artist worked at the Institute of Anatomy at the Zagreb University’s faculty of medicine, meticulously drawing cadavers for study for surgical textbooks. In her studio, she created work that defied simple classification – often using the very same tools.

“She was producing these really precise, technical illustrations which were used in surgical handbooks,” says a organizer of a fresh exhibition of the artist's oeuvre. “She was right in the middle of that practice … She was totally unfazed about being in dissections.” These detailed anatomical studies, observes a museum curator, are still published in handbooks for medical students currently in Croatia.

Where Two Realms Converged

Schubert’s dual vocation wasn’t unusual for creatives in the former Yugoslavia, who seldom could rely on art sales. But the way these two worlds bled into each other was. The surgical blades for precise cuts on bodies became instruments for slicing canvas. Adhesive tape intended for bandages secured her sliced creations. Laboratory tubes commonly used for samples transformed into containers for her life story.

A Frustration That Cut Deep

At the start of the seventies, Schubert was still creating within the limits of classic art. She produced meticulous, hyperrealistic still lifes in oil and acrylic of confectionery and tabletop items. But frustration had been building since her student days. During her time at the Zagreb art school, she was required to depict nude figures. “I needed to drive the blade into the painting, it truly frustrated me, that taut surface on which I had to talk about something,” she confided in a researcher, among the rare individuals she spoke with. “I thrust the blade into the painting in place of a brush.”

The Artistic Performance of Cutting

That year, this desire became a concrete action. Schubert produced eleven large canvases. She painted each one a blue monochrome before taking a medical scalpel and executing numerous intentional, accurate incisions. She then folded back the sliced fabric to expose the underside, producing pieces recorded with clinical accuracy. She timestamped each to emphasize their nature as events. In one 1977 series of photographs, titled Self-Portrait Through a Sliced Painting, she inserted her features, hair, and digits through the openings, turning her own body into artistic material.

“Indeed, my entire oeuvre carries a sense of dissection … dissection like an evening nude,” the artist replied when asked about their meaning. For a close friend and scholar, this explanation was a key insight – a clue from an artist who rarely explained herself.

Two Lives, Deeply Connected

Analysts frequently presented the artist's dual roles as completely distinct: the experimental avant garde artist on one side, the anatomical artist supporting herself separately. “My perspective is that those two personalities were deeply, deeply connected,” states a scholar. “It's impossible to spend 35 years at the Anatomy Institute from eight in the morning until three in the 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 within creations that superficially look completely abstract. During the middle of the 1980s, she made a collection of angular works – trapeziums, as they came to be known. Art writers grouped them with the popular geometric abstraction trend. However, the reality was uncovered much later, while examining her personal papers.

“I asked her, how do you produce the trapeziums?” remembers a scholar. “Her response was straightforward: it's a human face.” Those characteristic colours – known among associates as her personal red and blue – matched the precise colors used for drawing neck vasculature in anatomy books for a surgical anatomy textbook utilized in medical faculties across Europe. “The connection was that both colors surfaced simultaneously,” the explanation continues. The shaped canvases were essentially distilled anatomical studies – painted while she worked on anatomical illustrations by day.

Embracing Ephemeral Elements

In the late 70s and early 80s, 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. When asked why she’d shifted to such organic materials, she expressed that the art world had become “barren theoretically”. She felt compelled to transgress – to engage with truly ephemeral substances in reaction to a creatively arid landscape.

A 1979 piece entitled 100 Roses, saw her strip a hundred roses of their petals. She wove the stems into circles on the ground placing the foliage and petals within. When encountered during exhibition preparation, the work maintained its impact – the floral elements now totally preserved though wonderfully undamaged. “The scent of roses persists,” a commentator notes. “The colour is still there.”

The Artist of Mystery

“My aim is to remain enigmatic, to conceal my process,” Schubert confided during one of her final conversations. Mystery was her method. On occasion, she displayed counterfeit pieces while hiding originals under her bed. She eradicated specific works, keeping merely autographed copies. Although she participated in global art events and being celebrated as a pioneering figure, she conducted hardly any media talks and her output stayed mostly obscure internationally. An ongoing display represents the initial large-scale presentation of her work internationally.

Confronting the Violence of War

The 1990s arrived, bringing the Yugoslav Wars. Hostilities impacted the capital directly. The artist answered with a group of mixed-media works. She adhered press images and headlines onto panels. She photocopied and enlarged them. Then she obscured the surface with paint – rectangular forms reminiscent of scanning lines. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|