‘I felt forced to stab the knife through the canvas’: The artist Edita Schubert wielded her scalpel like other artists wield a brush.

Edita Schubert led a dual existence. For more than three decades, the artist from Croatia was employed by the Department of Anatomy at the University of Zagreb’s medical faculty, precisely illustrating cadavers for study for medical reference books. Within her artistic workspace, she produced art that eluded all labels – regularly utilizing the exact implements.

“She was producing these really precise, technical illustrations which were used in anatomy guides,” explains a curator of a new retrospective of the artist's oeuvre. “She was right in the middle of that practice … She was totally unfazed about being in dissections.” Her anatomical drawings, notes a museum curator, are still published in handbooks for anatomy students in Croatia today.

Where Two Realms Converged

A split career path was not rare for Yugoslav artists, 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 were transformed into tools for cutting fabric. The medical tape meant for wound dressing secured her sliced creations. Laboratory tubes commonly used for samples evolved into receptacles for her personal history.

An Artistic Restlessness

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 salt and sugar shakers. But frustration had been building since her student days. During her time at the Zagreb art school, she’d been forced to paint nudes. “I had to plunge the knife into the canvas, it genuinely irritated me, that stretched surface I was forced to communicate upon,” she confided in a researcher, in a seldom-granted conversation. “I used the knife to pierce the canvas, not a paintbrush.”

The Artistic Performance of Cutting

In 1977, that urge took literal form. Schubert produced eleven large canvases. She painted each one a blue monochrome prior to picking up a surgical blade and making hundreds of deliberate, precise cuts. Afterwards, she peeled back the severed canvas to show the backside, creating works she documented with forensic precision. She dated each one to underscore that they were actions. In a photographic series from that year, called Self-Portrait With a Perforated Work, she pushed her face, hair, and fingers through the perforations, making her own form part of the artwork.

“Yes, all my art has a character of dissection … anatomical analysis similar to figure drawing,” Schubert answered regarding the works' significance. For an intimate confidant and researcher, this statement was illuminating – a glimpse into the mind of an elusive figure.

A Dual Existence, Inextricably Linked

Analysts frequently presented her twin professions as wholly divided: the radical innovator in one corner, the anatomical artist supporting herself separately. “My perspective is 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 without being affected by the surroundings.”

Anatomical Echoes in Geometric Shapes

What makes a current exhibition particularly revelatory is the way it follows these anatomical influences 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.

“The question was posed: how are these forms made?” remembers a scholar. “She explained simply: they represent a human face.” The signature tones – known among associates as her personal red and blue – matched the precise colors 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 – executed alongside her daily technical illustration work.

A Turn Towards the Organic

During the transition into the 1980s, her creative approach changed once more. She started making assemblages from twigs secured with hide. She arranged collections of bone, petals, spices and ash on floors. Inquired regarding the change to ephemeral components, Schubert explained that art “was completely desiccated in the concept”. She felt an urge to break boundaries – to work with actual decaying material as an answer to conceptually sterile work.

One work from 1979, 100 Roses, involved her removing petals from a hundred blooms. She braided the stems into round arrangements with the leaves and petals arranged inside. Upon being viewed while organizing a show, it still held its power – the organic matter now fully desiccated yet astonishingly whole. “The scent of roses persists,” a commentator notes. “The hue has endured.”

The Artist of Mystery

“I always want to be mysterious, not to reveal what I’m doing,” the artist shared in late-life discussions. Obscurity was her technique. At times, she showed inauthentic creations stashing authentic works out of sight. She eliminated select sketches, keeping merely autographed copies. Despite exhibiting at major international biennales and gaining recognition as a trailblazer, she granted virtually no press access and her output stayed mostly obscure internationally. A current museum exhibition is her first major solo show outside her homeland.

Responding to the Horrors of Conflict

The 1990s arrived, bringing the Yugoslav Wars. Violence reached Zagreb itself. She reacted with a collection of assembled pieces. She adhered press images and headlines onto panels. She photocopied and enlarged them. Subsequently, she overpainted all elements – dark stripes akin to product codes. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|