🔗 Share this article ‘I felt forced to stab the knife through the canvas’: Edita Schubert wielded her scalpel like creatives handle a paintbrush. Edita Schubert led a dual existence. Throughout a career lasting over thirty years, the esteemed Croatian creator held a position at the Department of Anatomy at the Zagreb University’s faculty of medicine, carefully sketching dissected human bodies for medical reference books. In her private atelier, she created work that defied simple classification – 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 her artistic output. “She was right in the middle of that practice … She was totally unfazed about being in dissections.” Her anatomical drawings, comments a arts scholar, are still published in handbooks for medical students currently in Croatia. The Intermingling of Dual Vocations A split career path was not rare for Yugoslav artists, who rarely had access to a commercial art market. Yet, the fusion of these two domains was distinctive. The scalpels she used to make clean incisions in cadavers became instruments for slicing canvas. The medical tape meant for wound dressing held her perforated artworks together. Glass vials usually meant for scientific specimens evolved into receptacles for her personal history. An Artistic Restlessness At the start of the seventies, Schubert was still creating within the limits of classic art. She crafted precise, ultra-realistic arrangements in acrylic and oil paints of sweets and condiment containers. However, discontent had been growing since her academy years. During her time at the Zagreb art school, she was required to depict nude figures. “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, one of the few people she ever granted an interview. “I thrust the blade into the painting in place of a 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 then using an anatomical scalpel and performing countless measured, exact slices. She then folded back the sliced fabric to expose the underside, producing pieces recorded with clinical accuracy. Marking each with a date highlighted their status as performances. Through a set of photos created in 1977, entitled Self-Portrait Behind a Perforated Canvas, she pushed her face, hair, and fingers through the perforations, turning her own body into artistic material. “Absolutely, my work possesses a dissective quality … dissection akin to a life study,” Schubert answered regarding the works' significance. According to a trusted associate and academic, this explanation was a key insight – a hint from a creator who seldom offered commentary. Two Lives, Deeply Connected Art commentators in Croatia often viewed Schubert’s two lives as entirely separate: the radical innovator in one corner, the technical draftsman funding her life in the other. “I have always believed that those two personalities were deeply, deeply connected,” 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 and not be influenced by what you see there.” Biological Inspirations Beneath the Surface The revelatory nature of a present showcase is how it traces these medical undercurrents in pieces that initially appear purely non-representational. In the mid-1980s, Schubert produced a series of geometric paintings – trapeziums, as they came to be known. Art writers grouped them with the popular geometric abstraction trend. However, the reality was uncovered much later, when cataloguing Schubert’s estate. “I inquired, how are these shapes created?” states an associate. “Her response was straightforward: it's a human face.” The signature tones – known among associates as her personal red and blue – matched the precise colors used for drawing neck vasculature in anatomy books within a reference book for surgeons utilized in medical faculties across Europe. “The connection was that both colors surfaced simultaneously,” the account notes. The shaped canvases were essentially distilled anatomical studies – painted while she worked on anatomical illustrations by day. A Turn Towards the Organic In the late 70s and early 80s, 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. Questioned about the move to natural substances, the artist stated that contemporary art had “dried up intellectually”. She was driven to cross lines – to utilize genuinely perishable matter in reaction to a creatively arid landscape. One work from 1979, 100 Roses, featured her denuding a century of flowers. She intertwined the stalks into circular forms placing the foliage and petals within. When observed in a curatorial context, the piece retained its potency – the floral elements now totally preserved yet astonishingly whole. “The aroma remains,” a commentator notes. “The colour is still there.” A Practitioner of Secrecy “I always want to be mysterious, not to reveal what I’m doing,” Schubert confided during one of her final conversations. Secrecy was her strategy. At times, she showed inauthentic creations concealing genuine artworks beneath her bed. She eradicated specific works, only retaining signed reproductions. Even with showings at prestigious exhibitions and gaining recognition as a trailblazer, she gave almost no interviews and her work remained largely unknown outside her region. A current museum exhibition is her first major solo show outside her homeland. Addressing the Trauma of Battle Subsequently, the nineties dawned with the outbreak of conflict. War came to her city. The artist answered with a group of mixed-media works. She glued journalistic imagery and type onto surfaces. 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|
Edita Schubert led a dual existence. Throughout a career lasting over thirty years, the esteemed Croatian creator held a position at the Department of Anatomy at the Zagreb University’s faculty of medicine, carefully sketching dissected human bodies for medical reference books. In her private atelier, she created work that defied simple classification – 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 her artistic output. “She was right in the middle of that practice … She was totally unfazed about being in dissections.” Her anatomical drawings, comments a arts scholar, are still published in handbooks for medical students currently in Croatia. The Intermingling of Dual Vocations A split career path was not rare for Yugoslav artists, who rarely had access to a commercial art market. Yet, the fusion of these two domains was distinctive. The scalpels she used to make clean incisions in cadavers became instruments for slicing canvas. The medical tape meant for wound dressing held her perforated artworks together. Glass vials usually meant for scientific specimens evolved into receptacles for her personal history. An Artistic Restlessness At the start of the seventies, Schubert was still creating within the limits of classic art. She crafted precise, ultra-realistic arrangements in acrylic and oil paints of sweets and condiment containers. However, discontent had been growing since her academy years. During her time at the Zagreb art school, she was required to depict nude figures. “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, one of the few people she ever granted an interview. “I thrust the blade into the painting in place of a 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 then using an anatomical scalpel and performing countless measured, exact slices. She then folded back the sliced fabric to expose the underside, producing pieces recorded with clinical accuracy. Marking each with a date highlighted their status as performances. Through a set of photos created in 1977, entitled Self-Portrait Behind a Perforated Canvas, she pushed her face, hair, and fingers through the perforations, turning her own body into artistic material. “Absolutely, my work possesses a dissective quality … dissection akin to a life study,” Schubert answered regarding the works' significance. According to a trusted associate and academic, this explanation was a key insight – a hint from a creator who seldom offered commentary. Two Lives, Deeply Connected Art commentators in Croatia often viewed Schubert’s two lives as entirely separate: the radical innovator in one corner, the technical draftsman funding her life in the other. “I have always believed that those two personalities were deeply, deeply connected,” 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 and not be influenced by what you see there.” Biological Inspirations Beneath the Surface The revelatory nature of a present showcase is how it traces these medical undercurrents in pieces that initially appear purely non-representational. In the mid-1980s, Schubert produced a series of geometric paintings – trapeziums, as they came to be known. Art writers grouped them with the popular geometric abstraction trend. However, the reality was uncovered much later, when cataloguing Schubert’s estate. “I inquired, how are these shapes created?” states an associate. “Her response was straightforward: it's a human face.” The signature tones – known among associates as her personal red and blue – matched the precise colors used for drawing neck vasculature in anatomy books within a reference book for surgeons utilized in medical faculties across Europe. “The connection was that both colors surfaced simultaneously,” the account notes. The shaped canvases were essentially distilled anatomical studies – painted while she worked on anatomical illustrations by day. A Turn Towards the Organic In the late 70s and early 80s, 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. Questioned about the move to natural substances, the artist stated that contemporary art had “dried up intellectually”. She was driven to cross lines – to utilize genuinely perishable matter in reaction to a creatively arid landscape. One work from 1979, 100 Roses, featured her denuding a century of flowers. She intertwined the stalks into circular forms placing the foliage and petals within. When observed in a curatorial context, the piece retained its potency – the floral elements now totally preserved yet astonishingly whole. “The aroma remains,” a commentator notes. “The colour is still there.” A Practitioner of Secrecy “I always want to be mysterious, not to reveal what I’m doing,” Schubert confided during one of her final conversations. Secrecy was her strategy. At times, she showed inauthentic creations concealing genuine artworks beneath her bed. She eradicated specific works, only retaining signed reproductions. Even with showings at prestigious exhibitions and gaining recognition as a trailblazer, she gave almost no interviews and her work remained largely unknown outside her region. A current museum exhibition is her first major solo show outside her homeland. Addressing the Trauma of Battle Subsequently, the nineties dawned with the outbreak of conflict. War came to her city. The artist answered with a group of mixed-media works. She glued journalistic imagery and type onto surfaces. 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|