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

Edita Schubert lived a double life. Over a period spanning thirty years, the artist from Croatia worked at the Institute of Anatomy at the medical school of the University of Zagreb, precisely illustrating cadavers for study for textbooks for surgeons. In her private atelier, 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 organizer of a fresh exhibition of her artistic output. “She was deeply immersed in that work … She was entirely comfortable in the dissection room.” These detailed anatomical studies, notes a exhibition curator, are continually used in textbooks for medical students currently in Croatia.

The Intermingling of Dual Vocations

A split career path was not rare for creatives in the former Yugoslavia, who often lacked a viable art market. But the way these two worlds bled into each other was. The scalpels she used to make clean incisions in cadavers were transformed into tools for cutting fabric. Surgical tape designed for medical use held her perforated artworks together. Glass vials usually meant for scientific specimens became vessels for her autobiography.

A Creative Urge

During the beginning of the 1970s, Schubert was initially operating within conventional painting boundaries. Her work included detailed, photorealistic compositions in acrylic and oil paints of sweets and tabletop items. But frustration had been building since her student days. While studying at the fine arts academy in Zagreb, she’d been forced to paint nudes. “I had to plunge the knife into the canvas, it genuinely irritated me, that tight canvas where I was expected to express myself,” she confided in a researcher, among the rare individuals she spoke with. “I stabbed the knife into the canvas instead of the brush.”

Where Anatomical Practice Meets Creation

In 1977, that urge took literal form. She made eleven big pieces. 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 reveal its reverse, fashioning artworks catalogued with scientific detail. She timestamped each to emphasize their nature as events. In a photographic series from that year, titled Self-Portrait Through a Sliced Painting, she pushed her face, hair, and fingers through the perforations, making her own form part of the artwork.

“Absolutely, my work possesses a dissective quality … anatomical analysis similar to figure drawing,” the artist replied when asked about their meaning. For an intimate confidant and researcher, this statement was illuminating – a clue from an artist who rarely explained herself.

Separate Careers, Intertwined Roots

Croatian critics have tended to treat her twin professions as wholly divided: the pioneering creator in one sphere, the anatomical artist supporting herself separately. “I have always believed that her dual selves were intimately linked,” notes a close friend. “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.”

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. Around 1985, Schubert produced a series of geometric paintings – geometric shapes, subsequently labeled. Yugoslav critics lumped them into the fashionable neo-geo movement. Yet, the actual inspiration was found subsequently, during an archival review of her possessions.

“I inquired, how are these shapes created?” recalls a friend. “She explained simply: they represent a human face.” Those characteristic colours – known among associates as her personal red and blue – were identical tints used for drawing neck vasculature in anatomy books in a manual for surgical anatomy used across European medical faculties. “I realised that those two colours appeared at the same time,” the account notes. The angular paintings were actually abstracted human forms – painted while she worked on anatomical illustrations by day.

Shifting to Natural Materials

Towards the end of the seventies and start of the eighties, Schubert’s practice took another turn. 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, the artist stated that contemporary art had “dried up intellectually”. She was driven to cross lines – to work with actual decaying material as an answer to conceptually sterile work.

A 1979 piece entitled 100 Roses, featured her denuding a century of flowers. She braided the stems into round arrangements placing the foliage and petals within. Upon being viewed while organizing a show, the work maintained its impact – the leaves and petals now completely dried out yet astonishingly whole. “You can still smell the roses,” a viewer remarks. “The colour is still there.”

The Artist of Mystery

“My aim is to remain enigmatic, to conceal my process,” the artist shared in late-life discussions. Secrecy was her strategy. She would sometimes exhibit fake works while hiding originals under her bed. She eliminated select sketches, only retaining signed reproductions. Even with showings at prestigious exhibitions and gaining recognition as a trailblazer, she gave almost no interviews and her art was predominantly unrecognized abroad. 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. Hostilities impacted the capital directly. The artist answered with a group of mixed-media works. She adhered press images and headlines onto panels. She reproduced and magnified them. Then she painted over everything in acrylic – black bars resembling barcodes. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|