🔗 Share this article ‘I felt forced to stab the knife through the canvas’: The artist Edita Schubert wielded her scalpel like painters use a brush. Edita Schubert lived a double life. Throughout a career lasting over thirty years, the late Croatian artist held a position at the Institute of Anatomy at the Zagreb University’s faculty of medicine, carefully sketching dissected human bodies for textbooks for surgeons. In her private atelier, she created work that defied simple classification – often using the very same tools. “She created these highly accurate, technical drawings which were used in anatomy guides,” says a organizer of a fresh exhibition of the artist's oeuvre. “She was right in the middle of that practice … She showed no hesitation in the presence of dissections.” Her anatomical drawings, comments a exhibition curator, are continually used in textbooks for medical students currently in Croatia. Where Two Realms Converged Having two professional lives was not uncommon for artists from Yugoslavia, who seldom could rely on art sales. But the way these two worlds bled into each other was. The medical knives for anatomical dissection turned into devices for perforating paintings. Adhesive tape intended for bandages secured her sliced creations. Glass vials usually meant for scientific specimens transformed into containers for her life story. An Artistic Restlessness At the start of the seventies, Schubert was still working within the confines of traditional painting. Her work included detailed, photorealistic compositions in acrylic and oil paints of sweets and condiment containers. However, discontent had been growing since her academy years. While studying at the fine arts academy in Zagreb, the curriculum mandated life drawing. “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, one of the few people she ever granted an interview. “I used the knife to pierce the canvas, not a paintbrush.” Where Anatomical Practice Meets Creation By 1977, this impulse manifested physically. Schubert produced eleven large canvases. Each was coated in a single shade of blue prior to picking up a surgical blade and making hundreds of deliberate, precise cuts. She then folded back the sliced fabric to reveal its reverse, creating works she documented with forensic precision. She dated each one to underscore that they were actions. Through a set of photos created in 1977, 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 akin to a life study,” Schubert answered regarding the works' significance. For a close friend and scholar, this statement was illuminating – a hint from a creator who seldom offered commentary. Separate Careers, Intertwined Roots Croatian critics have tended to treat the artist's dual roles as completely distinct: the experimental avant garde artist on one side, the medical illustrator who paid the bills on the other. “My perspective is that these two identities were profoundly intertwined,” explains a confidant. “One cannot be employed for three decades in an anatomy department daily for hours on end and not be influenced by what you see there.” Medical Undercurrents in Abstract Forms A key insight from a ongoing display is how it maps these clinical themes within creations that superficially look completely abstract. Around 1985, she made a collection of angular works – trapezoidal forms, as they were later termed. Yugoslav critics lumped them into the fashionable neo-geo movement. But the truth was discovered only years later, when cataloguing Schubert’s estate. “I asked her, how do you produce the trapeziums?” recalls a friend. “And she told me, it’s very simple, it’s a human face.” Those characteristic colours – termed “Schubert red” and “Schubert blue” by peers – were identical tints she’d been using to illustrate the two main arteries of the neck in a manual for surgical anatomy employed throughout European medical schools. “I realised that those two colours appeared at the same time,” the account notes. The shaped canvases were essentially distilled anatomical studies – created concurrently with her daytime medical drawing. A Turn Towards the Organic Towards the end of the seventies and start of the eighties, the artist's work shifted direction again. She initiated works using wood lashed with straps. She composed displays of skeletal fragments, flower parts, herbs and soot. Inquired regarding the change to ephemeral components, Schubert explained that art “was completely desiccated in the concept”. She felt compelled to transgress – to utilize genuinely perishable matter as a response to art that had metaphorically withered. A 1979 piece entitled 100 Roses, saw her strip a hundred roses of their petals. She wove the stems into circles on the ground positioning the floral remnants in the center. When encountered during exhibition preparation, it still held its power – the leaves and petals now completely dried out yet astonishingly whole. “You can still smell the roses,” one observer marvels. “The colour is still there.” A Practitioner of Secrecy “I prefer to stay cryptic, to hide my intentions,” Schubert confided during one of her final conversations. Obscurity was her technique. At times, she showed inauthentic creations stashing authentic works out of sight. She eradicated specific works, leaving only signed photocopies in their place. Even with showings at prestigious exhibitions and being celebrated as a pioneering figure, she gave almost no interviews and her output stayed mostly obscure internationally. A present retrospective marks her first significant external showcase. Addressing the Trauma of Battle Then came the 1990s, and the Yugoslav Wars. Hostilities impacted the capital directly. The artist answered with a group of mixed-media works. She pasted newspaper photographs and text directly on to board. She duplicated and expanded 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|
Edita Schubert lived a double life. Throughout a career lasting over thirty years, the late Croatian artist held a position at the Institute of Anatomy at the Zagreb University’s faculty of medicine, carefully sketching dissected human bodies for textbooks for surgeons. In her private atelier, she created work that defied simple classification – often using the very same tools. “She created these highly accurate, technical drawings which were used in anatomy guides,” says a organizer of a fresh exhibition of the artist's oeuvre. “She was right in the middle of that practice … She showed no hesitation in the presence of dissections.” Her anatomical drawings, comments a exhibition curator, are continually used in textbooks for medical students currently in Croatia. Where Two Realms Converged Having two professional lives was not uncommon for artists from Yugoslavia, who seldom could rely on art sales. But the way these two worlds bled into each other was. The medical knives for anatomical dissection turned into devices for perforating paintings. Adhesive tape intended for bandages secured her sliced creations. Glass vials usually meant for scientific specimens transformed into containers for her life story. An Artistic Restlessness At the start of the seventies, Schubert was still working within the confines of traditional painting. Her work included detailed, photorealistic compositions in acrylic and oil paints of sweets and condiment containers. However, discontent had been growing since her academy years. While studying at the fine arts academy in Zagreb, the curriculum mandated life drawing. “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, one of the few people she ever granted an interview. “I used the knife to pierce the canvas, not a paintbrush.” Where Anatomical Practice Meets Creation By 1977, this impulse manifested physically. Schubert produced eleven large canvases. Each was coated in a single shade of blue prior to picking up a surgical blade and making hundreds of deliberate, precise cuts. She then folded back the sliced fabric to reveal its reverse, creating works she documented with forensic precision. She dated each one to underscore that they were actions. Through a set of photos created in 1977, 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 akin to a life study,” Schubert answered regarding the works' significance. For a close friend and scholar, this statement was illuminating – a hint from a creator who seldom offered commentary. Separate Careers, Intertwined Roots Croatian critics have tended to treat the artist's dual roles as completely distinct: the experimental avant garde artist on one side, the medical illustrator who paid the bills on the other. “My perspective is that these two identities were profoundly intertwined,” explains a confidant. “One cannot be employed for three decades in an anatomy department daily for hours on end and not be influenced by what you see there.” Medical Undercurrents in Abstract Forms A key insight from a ongoing display is how it maps these clinical themes within creations that superficially look completely abstract. Around 1985, she made a collection of angular works – trapezoidal forms, as they were later termed. Yugoslav critics lumped them into the fashionable neo-geo movement. But the truth was discovered only years later, when cataloguing Schubert’s estate. “I asked her, how do you produce the trapeziums?” recalls a friend. “And she told me, it’s very simple, it’s a human face.” Those characteristic colours – termed “Schubert red” and “Schubert blue” by peers – were identical tints she’d been using to illustrate the two main arteries of the neck in a manual for surgical anatomy employed throughout European medical schools. “I realised that those two colours appeared at the same time,” the account notes. The shaped canvases were essentially distilled anatomical studies – created concurrently with her daytime medical drawing. A Turn Towards the Organic Towards the end of the seventies and start of the eighties, the artist's work shifted direction again. She initiated works using wood lashed with straps. She composed displays of skeletal fragments, flower parts, herbs and soot. Inquired regarding the change to ephemeral components, Schubert explained that art “was completely desiccated in the concept”. She felt compelled to transgress – to utilize genuinely perishable matter as a response to art that had metaphorically withered. A 1979 piece entitled 100 Roses, saw her strip a hundred roses of their petals. She wove the stems into circles on the ground positioning the floral remnants in the center. When encountered during exhibition preparation, it still held its power – the leaves and petals now completely dried out yet astonishingly whole. “You can still smell the roses,” one observer marvels. “The colour is still there.” A Practitioner of Secrecy “I prefer to stay cryptic, to hide my intentions,” Schubert confided during one of her final conversations. Obscurity was her technique. At times, she showed inauthentic creations stashing authentic works out of sight. She eradicated specific works, leaving only signed photocopies in their place. Even with showings at prestigious exhibitions and being celebrated as a pioneering figure, she gave almost no interviews and her output stayed mostly obscure internationally. A present retrospective marks her first significant external showcase. Addressing the Trauma of Battle Then came the 1990s, and the Yugoslav Wars. Hostilities impacted the capital directly. The artist answered with a group of mixed-media works. She pasted newspaper photographs and text directly on to board. She duplicated and expanded 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|