🔗 Share this article ‘I felt forced to stab the knife through the canvas’: Edita Schubert brandished her medical instrument like other artists wield a brush. Edita Schubert lived a double life. Throughout a career lasting over thirty years, the esteemed Croatian creator worked at the Institute of Anatomy at the medical school of the University of Zagreb, carefully sketching dissected human bodies for surgical textbooks. In her private atelier, she made art that resisted every attempt at categorisation – regularly utilizing the exact implements. “She was producing these really precise, technical illustrations which were used in surgical handbooks,” notes a curator of a new retrospective of her artistic output. “She was completely central to that discipline … She was entirely comfortable in the dissection room.” These detailed anatomical studies, notes a museum curator, are still featured in manuals for medical students in Croatia today. Where Two Realms Converged Schubert’s dual vocation wasn’t unusual for creatives in the former Yugoslavia, who often lacked a viable art market. But the way these two worlds bled into each other was. The surgical blades for precise cuts on bodies turned into devices for perforating paintings. 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 Creative Urge In the early 1970s, Schubert was still working within the confines of traditional painting. She crafted precise, ultra-realistic arrangements in acrylic and oil paints of sweets and salt and sugar shakers. Yet, irritation had been festering since her training. During her time at the Zagreb art school, the curriculum mandated life drawing. “I needed to drive the blade into the painting, it simply got on my nerves, that stretched surface I was forced to communicate upon,” she once explained to a scholar, one of the few people she ever granted an interview. “I used the knife to pierce the canvas, not a paintbrush.” The Artistic Performance of Cutting That year, this desire became a concrete action. The artist created eleven sizable paintings. All were rendered in a uniform blue hue prior to picking up a surgical blade and making hundreds of deliberate, precise cuts. Subsequently, she turned back the cut material to reveal its reverse, producing pieces recorded with clinical accuracy. Marking each with a date highlighted their status as performances. Through a set of photos created in 1977, called Self-Portrait With a Perforated Work, she inserted her features, hair, and digits through the openings, transforming her physical self into creative matter. “Absolutely, my work possesses a dissective quality … dissection like an evening nude,” Schubert answered regarding the works' significance. According to a trusted associate and academic, this explanation was a key insight – a glimpse into the mind of an elusive figure. A Dual Existence, Inextricably Linked Croatian critics have tended to treat Schubert’s two lives as entirely separate: the experimental avant garde artist on one side, the technical draftsman funding her life in the other. “I have always believed that those two personalities were deeply, deeply connected,” states a scholar. “It's impossible to spend 35 years at the Anatomy Institute from eight in the morning until three in the afternoon and remain untouched by the environment.” Anatomical Echoes in Geometric Shapes The revelatory nature of a present showcase is how it maps these clinical themes in pieces that initially appear purely non-representational. Around 1985, the artist created a group of shaped canvases – geometric shapes, subsequently labeled. Art writers grouped them with the popular geometric abstraction trend. But the truth was discovered only years later, when cataloguing Schubert’s estate. “The question was posed: how are these forms made?” states an associate. “Her response was straightforward: it's a human face.” Those characteristic colours – termed “Schubert red” and “Schubert blue” by peers – matched the precise colors used for drawing neck vasculature in anatomy books for a surgical anatomy textbook employed throughout European medical schools. “I realised that those two colours appeared at the same time,” the account notes. The angular paintings were actually abstracted human forms – painted while she worked on anatomical illustrations by day. Shifting to Natural Materials In the late 70s and early 80s, the artist's work shifted direction again. She started making assemblages from twigs secured with hide. She arranged collections of bone, petals, spices and ash on floors. When asked why she’d shifted to such organic materials, the artist stated that contemporary art had “dried up intellectually”. She felt an urge to break boundaries – to utilize genuinely perishable matter in reaction to a creatively arid landscape. One work from 1979, 100 Roses, saw her strip a hundred roses of their petals. She braided the stems into round arrangements placing the foliage and petals within. When observed in a curatorial context, the piece retained its potency – the organic matter now fully desiccated yet astonishingly whole. “You can still smell the roses,” a viewer remarks. “The pigmentation survives.” The Artist of Mystery “I prefer to stay cryptic, to hide my intentions,” the artist shared in late-life discussions. Mystery was her method. She would sometimes exhibit fake works concealing genuine artworks beneath her bed. She eradicated specific works, leaving only signed photocopies in their place. Despite exhibiting at major international biennales and being celebrated as a pioneering figure, she granted virtually no press access and her art was predominantly unrecognized abroad. An ongoing display represents the initial large-scale presentation of her work internationally. Addressing the Trauma of Battle The 1990s arrived, bringing the Yugoslav Wars. Hostilities impacted the capital directly. She reacted with a collection of assembled pieces. She adhered press images and headlines onto panels. 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 esteemed Croatian creator worked at the Institute of Anatomy at the medical school of the University of Zagreb, carefully sketching dissected human bodies for surgical textbooks. In her private atelier, she made art that resisted every attempt at categorisation – regularly utilizing the exact implements. “She was producing these really precise, technical illustrations which were used in surgical handbooks,” notes a curator of a new retrospective of her artistic output. “She was completely central to that discipline … She was entirely comfortable in the dissection room.” These detailed anatomical studies, notes a museum curator, are still featured in manuals for medical students in Croatia today. Where Two Realms Converged Schubert’s dual vocation wasn’t unusual for creatives in the former Yugoslavia, who often lacked a viable art market. But the way these two worlds bled into each other was. The surgical blades for precise cuts on bodies turned into devices for perforating paintings. 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 Creative Urge In the early 1970s, Schubert was still working within the confines of traditional painting. She crafted precise, ultra-realistic arrangements in acrylic and oil paints of sweets and salt and sugar shakers. Yet, irritation had been festering since her training. During her time at the Zagreb art school, the curriculum mandated life drawing. “I needed to drive the blade into the painting, it simply got on my nerves, that stretched surface I was forced to communicate upon,” she once explained to a scholar, one of the few people she ever granted an interview. “I used the knife to pierce the canvas, not a paintbrush.” The Artistic Performance of Cutting That year, this desire became a concrete action. The artist created eleven sizable paintings. All were rendered in a uniform blue hue prior to picking up a surgical blade and making hundreds of deliberate, precise cuts. Subsequently, she turned back the cut material to reveal its reverse, producing pieces recorded with clinical accuracy. Marking each with a date highlighted their status as performances. Through a set of photos created in 1977, called Self-Portrait With a Perforated Work, she inserted her features, hair, and digits through the openings, transforming her physical self into creative matter. “Absolutely, my work possesses a dissective quality … dissection like an evening nude,” Schubert answered regarding the works' significance. According to a trusted associate and academic, this explanation was a key insight – a glimpse into the mind of an elusive figure. A Dual Existence, Inextricably Linked Croatian critics have tended to treat Schubert’s two lives as entirely separate: the experimental avant garde artist on one side, the technical draftsman funding her life in the other. “I have always believed that those two personalities were deeply, deeply connected,” states a scholar. “It's impossible to spend 35 years at the Anatomy Institute from eight in the morning until three in the afternoon and remain untouched by the environment.” Anatomical Echoes in Geometric Shapes The revelatory nature of a present showcase is how it maps these clinical themes in pieces that initially appear purely non-representational. Around 1985, the artist created a group of shaped canvases – geometric shapes, subsequently labeled. Art writers grouped them with the popular geometric abstraction trend. But the truth was discovered only years later, when cataloguing Schubert’s estate. “The question was posed: how are these forms made?” states an associate. “Her response was straightforward: it's a human face.” Those characteristic colours – termed “Schubert red” and “Schubert blue” by peers – matched the precise colors used for drawing neck vasculature in anatomy books for a surgical anatomy textbook employed throughout European medical schools. “I realised that those two colours appeared at the same time,” the account notes. The angular paintings were actually abstracted human forms – painted while she worked on anatomical illustrations by day. Shifting to Natural Materials In the late 70s and early 80s, the artist's work shifted direction again. She started making assemblages from twigs secured with hide. She arranged collections of bone, petals, spices and ash on floors. When asked why she’d shifted to such organic materials, the artist stated that contemporary art had “dried up intellectually”. She felt an urge to break boundaries – to utilize genuinely perishable matter in reaction to a creatively arid landscape. One work from 1979, 100 Roses, saw her strip a hundred roses of their petals. She braided the stems into round arrangements placing the foliage and petals within. When observed in a curatorial context, the piece retained its potency – the organic matter now fully desiccated yet astonishingly whole. “You can still smell the roses,” a viewer remarks. “The pigmentation survives.” The Artist of Mystery “I prefer to stay cryptic, to hide my intentions,” the artist shared in late-life discussions. Mystery was her method. She would sometimes exhibit fake works concealing genuine artworks beneath her bed. She eradicated specific works, leaving only signed photocopies in their place. Despite exhibiting at major international biennales and being celebrated as a pioneering figure, she granted virtually no press access and her art was predominantly unrecognized abroad. An ongoing display represents the initial large-scale presentation of her work internationally. Addressing the Trauma of Battle The 1990s arrived, bringing the Yugoslav Wars. Hostilities impacted the capital directly. She reacted with a collection of assembled pieces. She adhered press images and headlines onto panels. 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|