🔗 Share this article ‘I had to plunge the knife into the canvas’: The artist Edita Schubert brandished her medical instrument like other artists wield a brush. The life of Edita Schubert was one of two distinct halves. Over a period spanning thirty years, the esteemed Croatian creator was employed by the Institute of Anatomy at the Zagreb University’s faculty of medicine, meticulously drawing dissected human bodies for textbooks for surgeons. Within her artistic workspace, she produced art that eluded all labels – often using the very same tools. “Her work involved crafting these meticulous, technical diagrams which were used in surgical handbooks,” says a curator of a new retrospective of the artist's oeuvre. “She was deeply immersed in that work … She showed no hesitation in the presence of dissections.” Her anatomical drawings, notes a arts scholar, are continually used in textbooks for medical students currently in Croatia. The Bleeding of Two Worlds Having two professional lives was not uncommon 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 became instruments for slicing canvas. The medical tape meant for wound dressing secured her sliced creations. The test tubes typically reserved for laboratory samples became vessels for her autobiography. A Frustration That Cut Deep In the early 1970s, Schubert was still working within the confines of traditional painting. Her work included detailed, photorealistic compositions in acrylic and oil paints of candies and condiment containers. But frustration had been building since her student days. At Zagreb’s Academy of Fine Arts, she’d been forced to paint nudes. “I had to plunge the knife into the canvas, it simply got on my nerves, 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 stabbed the knife into the canvas instead of the brush.” The Act of Dissection Becomes Art By 1977, this impulse manifested physically. Schubert produced eleven large canvases. She painted each one a blue monochrome before taking a medical scalpel and executing numerous intentional, accurate incisions. Subsequently, she turned back the cut material to reveal its reverse, fashioning artworks catalogued with scientific detail. Marking each with a date highlighted their status as performances. In one 1977 series of photographs, entitled Self-Portrait Behind a Perforated Canvas, she pressed her visage, locks, and hands into the cuts, turning her own body into artistic material. “Indeed, my entire oeuvre carries a sense of dissection … anatomical analysis similar to figure drawing,” Schubert answered regarding the works' significance. For an intimate confidant and researcher, this was a revelation – a glimpse into the mind of an elusive figure. Separate Careers, Intertwined Roots Analysts frequently presented 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. “I have always believed that these two identities were profoundly intertwined,” notes a close friend. “You can’t work for 35 years in the Institute of Anatomy 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 how it traces these medical undercurrents through works that, at first glance, seem entirely abstract. During the middle of the 1980s, the artist created a group of shaped canvases – trapeziums, as they came to be known. Yugoslav critics lumped them into the fashionable neo-geo movement. But the truth was discovered only years later, during an archival review of her possessions. “I asked her, how do you produce the trapeziums?” remembers a scholar. “And she told me, it’s very simple, it’s a human face.” The distinctive hues – what colleagues called “Schubert red” and “Schubert blue” – matched the precise colors used for drawing neck vasculature in anatomy books in a manual for surgical anatomy utilized in medical faculties across Europe. “The connection was that both colors surfaced simultaneously,” the account notes. The geometric abstractions were, in fact, highly stylised human bodies – executed alongside her daily technical illustration work. Embracing Ephemeral Elements In the late 70s and early 80s, her creative approach changed once more. She began creating installations from branches bound with leather. She arranged collections of bone, petals, spices and ash on floors. Questioned about the move to natural substances, she expressed that the art world had become “barren theoretically”. She was driven to cross lines – to utilize genuinely perishable matter as a response to art that had metaphorically withered. A 1979 piece entitled 100 Roses, featured her denuding a century of flowers. She braided the stems into round arrangements with the leaves and petals arranged inside. 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 viewer remarks. “The colour is still there.” The Artist of Mystery “I prefer to stay cryptic, to hide my intentions,” the artist shared in late-life discussions. Obscurity was her technique. At times, she showed inauthentic creations while hiding originals under her bed. She eradicated specific works, leaving only signed photocopies in their place. Despite exhibiting at major international biennales and gaining recognition as a trailblazer, she gave almost no interviews and her art was predominantly unrecognized abroad. A present retrospective marks her first significant external showcase. Confronting the Violence of War Then came the 1990s, and 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. Then she obscured the surface with paint – black bars resembling barcodes. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|
The life of Edita Schubert was one of two distinct halves. Over a period spanning thirty years, the esteemed Croatian creator was employed by the Institute of Anatomy at the Zagreb University’s faculty of medicine, meticulously drawing dissected human bodies for textbooks for surgeons. Within her artistic workspace, she produced art that eluded all labels – often using the very same tools. “Her work involved crafting these meticulous, technical diagrams which were used in surgical handbooks,” says a curator of a new retrospective of the artist's oeuvre. “She was deeply immersed in that work … She showed no hesitation in the presence of dissections.” Her anatomical drawings, notes a arts scholar, are continually used in textbooks for medical students currently in Croatia. The Bleeding of Two Worlds Having two professional lives was not uncommon 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 became instruments for slicing canvas. The medical tape meant for wound dressing secured her sliced creations. The test tubes typically reserved for laboratory samples became vessels for her autobiography. A Frustration That Cut Deep In the early 1970s, Schubert was still working within the confines of traditional painting. Her work included detailed, photorealistic compositions in acrylic and oil paints of candies and condiment containers. But frustration had been building since her student days. At Zagreb’s Academy of Fine Arts, she’d been forced to paint nudes. “I had to plunge the knife into the canvas, it simply got on my nerves, 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 stabbed the knife into the canvas instead of the brush.” The Act of Dissection Becomes Art By 1977, this impulse manifested physically. Schubert produced eleven large canvases. She painted each one a blue monochrome before taking a medical scalpel and executing numerous intentional, accurate incisions. Subsequently, she turned back the cut material to reveal its reverse, fashioning artworks catalogued with scientific detail. Marking each with a date highlighted their status as performances. In one 1977 series of photographs, entitled Self-Portrait Behind a Perforated Canvas, she pressed her visage, locks, and hands into the cuts, turning her own body into artistic material. “Indeed, my entire oeuvre carries a sense of dissection … anatomical analysis similar to figure drawing,” Schubert answered regarding the works' significance. For an intimate confidant and researcher, this was a revelation – a glimpse into the mind of an elusive figure. Separate Careers, Intertwined Roots Analysts frequently presented 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. “I have always believed that these two identities were profoundly intertwined,” notes a close friend. “You can’t work for 35 years in the Institute of Anatomy 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 how it traces these medical undercurrents through works that, at first glance, seem entirely abstract. During the middle of the 1980s, the artist created a group of shaped canvases – trapeziums, as they came to be known. Yugoslav critics lumped them into the fashionable neo-geo movement. But the truth was discovered only years later, during an archival review of her possessions. “I asked her, how do you produce the trapeziums?” remembers a scholar. “And she told me, it’s very simple, it’s a human face.” The distinctive hues – what colleagues called “Schubert red” and “Schubert blue” – matched the precise colors used for drawing neck vasculature in anatomy books in a manual for surgical anatomy utilized in medical faculties across Europe. “The connection was that both colors surfaced simultaneously,” the account notes. The geometric abstractions were, in fact, highly stylised human bodies – executed alongside her daily technical illustration work. Embracing Ephemeral Elements In the late 70s and early 80s, her creative approach changed once more. She began creating installations from branches bound with leather. She arranged collections of bone, petals, spices and ash on floors. Questioned about the move to natural substances, she expressed that the art world had become “barren theoretically”. She was driven to cross lines – to utilize genuinely perishable matter as a response to art that had metaphorically withered. A 1979 piece entitled 100 Roses, featured her denuding a century of flowers. She braided the stems into round arrangements with the leaves and petals arranged inside. 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 viewer remarks. “The colour is still there.” The Artist of Mystery “I prefer to stay cryptic, to hide my intentions,” the artist shared in late-life discussions. Obscurity was her technique. At times, she showed inauthentic creations while hiding originals under her bed. She eradicated specific works, leaving only signed photocopies in their place. Despite exhibiting at major international biennales and gaining recognition as a trailblazer, she gave almost no interviews and her art was predominantly unrecognized abroad. A present retrospective marks her first significant external showcase. Confronting the Violence of War Then came the 1990s, and 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. Then she obscured the surface with paint – black bars resembling barcodes. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|