‘I felt forced to stab the knife through the canvas’: Edita Schubert wielded her scalpel like creatives handle a paintbrush.

Edita Schubert lived a double life. Over a period spanning thirty years, the esteemed Croatian creator was employed by the Institute of Anatomy at the medical school of the University of Zagreb, meticulously drawing cadavers for study for medical reference books. In her private atelier, she created work that defied simple classification – regularly utilizing the exact implements.

“She created these highly accurate, technical drawings which were used in surgical handbooks,” says a director of a current show of Schubert’s work. “She was right in the middle of that practice … She was entirely comfortable in the dissection room.” These detailed anatomical studies, notes a exhibition curator, are still published in handbooks for medical students to this day in Croatia.

The Intermingling of Dual Vocations

Schubert’s dual vocation wasn’t unusual for artists from Yugoslavia, who seldom could rely on art sales. 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. Laboratory tubes commonly used for samples evolved into receptacles for her personal history.

A Frustration That Cut Deep

In the early 1970s, Schubert was initially operating within conventional painting boundaries. Her work included detailed, photorealistic compositions in oil and acrylic of sweets and salt and sugar shakers. But frustration had been building since her student days. At Zagreb’s Academy of Fine Arts, the curriculum mandated life drawing. “I had to plunge the knife into the canvas, it truly frustrated me, that tight canvas where I was expected to express myself,” she confided in a researcher, in a seldom-granted conversation. “I stabbed the knife into the canvas instead of the brush.”

Where Anatomical Practice Meets Creation

In 1977, that urge took literal form. The artist created eleven sizable paintings. Each was coated in a single shade of blue before taking a medical scalpel and performing countless measured, exact slices. She then folded back the sliced fabric to expose the underside, producing pieces recorded with clinical accuracy. She dated each one to underscore that they were actions. In one 1977 series of photographs, entitled Self-Portrait Behind a Perforated Canvas, she inserted her features, hair, and digits through the openings, making her own form part of the artwork.

“Absolutely, my work possesses a dissective quality … dissection akin to a life study,” the artist replied when asked about their meaning. According to a trusted associate and academic, this statement was illuminating – a hint from a creator who seldom offered commentary.

Two Lives, Deeply Connected

Analysts frequently presented the artist's dual roles as completely distinct: the radical innovator in one corner, the anatomical artist supporting herself separately. “I have always believed that those two personalities were deeply, deeply connected,” notes a close friend. “One cannot be employed for three decades in an anatomy department from eight in the morning until three in the afternoon and remain untouched by the environment.”

Anatomical Echoes in Geometric Shapes

A key insight from a ongoing display is how it traces these medical undercurrents through works that, at first glance, seem entirely abstract. Around 1985, she made a collection of angular works – trapezoidal forms, as they were later termed. Art writers grouped them with the popular geometric abstraction trend. However, the reality was uncovered much later, during an archival review of her possessions.

“I inquired, how are these shapes created?” remembers a scholar. “Her response was straightforward: it's a human face.” The signature tones – known among associates as her personal red and blue – were the exact shades used for drawing neck vasculature in anatomy books in a manual for surgical anatomy used across European medical faculties. “The connection was that both colors surfaced simultaneously,” the account notes. 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, her creative approach changed once more. 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 an urge to break boundaries – to engage with truly ephemeral substances as an answer to conceptually sterile work.

One work from 1979, 100 Roses, saw her strip a hundred roses of their petals. She braided the stems into round arrangements positioning the floral remnants in the center. When encountered during exhibition preparation, the work maintained its impact – the floral elements now totally preserved yet astonishingly whole. “The scent of roses persists,” one observer marvels. “The hue has endured.”

A Practitioner of Secrecy

“My aim is to remain enigmatic, to conceal my process,” the artist shared in late-life discussions. Obscurity was her technique. At times, she showed inauthentic creations stashing authentic works out of sight. She destroyed certain drawings, keeping merely autographed copies. Even with showings at prestigious exhibitions and gaining recognition as a trailblazer, 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

Then came the 1990s, and the Yugoslav Wars. War came to her city. Schubert responded with a series of collages. She pasted newspaper photographs and text directly on to board. She reproduced and magnified them. Subsequently, she overpainted all elements – dark stripes akin to product codes. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|