🔗 Share this article ‘I had to plunge the knife into the canvas’: Edita Schubert brandished her medical instrument like painters use a brush. The life of Edita Schubert was one of two distinct halves. For more than three decades, the esteemed Croatian creator was employed by the Institute of Anatomy at the medical school of the University of Zagreb, carefully sketching cadavers for study for medical reference books. Within her artistic workspace, she created work that defied simple classification – often using the very same tools. “She created these highly accurate, technical drawings which were used in medical textbooks,” explains a curator of a new retrospective of Schubert’s work. “She was completely central to that discipline … She showed no hesitation in the presence of dissections.” Her anatomical drawings, comments a arts scholar, are still published in handbooks for anatomy students currently in Croatia. The Bleeding of Two Worlds A split career path was not rare for Yugoslav artists, who rarely had access to a commercial art market. But the way these two worlds bled into each other was. The medical knives for anatomical dissection became instruments for slicing canvas. Surgical tape designed for medical use held her perforated artworks together. The test tubes typically reserved for laboratory samples transformed into containers for her life story. A Frustration That Cut Deep During the beginning of the 1970s, Schubert was initially operating within conventional painting boundaries. She produced meticulous, hyperrealistic still lifes in acrylic and oil paints of sweets and salt and sugar shakers. Yet, irritation had been festering since her training. At Zagreb’s Academy of Fine Arts, she’d been forced to paint nudes. “I was compelled to stab the knife through the fabric, it truly frustrated me, that tight canvas where I was expected to express myself,” she confided in a researcher, among the rare individuals she spoke with. “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 before taking a medical scalpel and making hundreds of deliberate, precise cuts. Afterwards, she peeled back the severed canvas to expose the underside, creating works she documented with forensic precision. She dated each one to underscore that they were actions. In one 1977 series of photographs, called Self-Portrait With a Perforated Work, she inserted her features, hair, and digits through the openings, transforming her physical self into creative matter. “Yes, all my art has a character of dissection … dissection akin to a life study,” Schubert answered regarding the works' significance. According to a trusted associate and academic, this was a revelation – a glimpse into the mind of an elusive figure. A Dual Existence, Inextricably Linked Art commentators in Croatia often viewed her twin professions as wholly divided: the pioneering creator in one sphere, the medical illustrator who paid the bills on the other. “I have always believed that her dual selves were intimately linked,” explains a confidant. “One cannot be employed for three decades in an anatomy department from eight in the morning until three in the afternoon and not be influenced by what you see there.” 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, she made a collection of angular works – geometric shapes, subsequently labeled. Contemporary critics categorized them under the trendy neo-geo label. Yet, the actual inspiration was found subsequently, when cataloguing Schubert’s estate. “I asked her, how do you produce the trapeziums?” recalls a friend. “Her response was straightforward: it's a human face.” The distinctive hues – termed “Schubert red” and “Schubert blue” by peers – were the exact shades employed to depict cervical arteries in medical texts for a surgical anatomy textbook employed throughout European medical schools. “I realised that those two colours appeared at the same time,” the narrative adds. 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 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 compelled to transgress – to engage with truly ephemeral substances as a response to art that had metaphorically withered. An artwork dating to 1979, One Hundred Roses, saw her strip a hundred roses of their petals. She braided the stems into round arrangements positioning the floral remnants in the center. When observed in a curatorial context, it still held its power – 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 prefer to stay cryptic, to hide my intentions,” Schubert confided during one of her final conversations. Mystery was her method. She would sometimes exhibit fake works while hiding originals under her bed. She eradicated specific works, keeping merely autographed copies. Although she participated in global art events and receiving acclaim as an innovator, she conducted hardly any media talks and her art was predominantly unrecognized abroad. A present retrospective marks her first significant external showcase. Addressing the Trauma of Battle Then came the 1990s, and the Yugoslav Wars. Violence reached Zagreb itself. The artist answered with a group of mixed-media works. She glued journalistic imagery and type onto surfaces. She photocopied and enlarged them. Then she painted over everything in acrylic – rectangular forms reminiscent of scanning lines. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|
The life of Edita Schubert was one of two distinct halves. For more than three decades, the esteemed Croatian creator was employed by the Institute of Anatomy at the medical school of the University of Zagreb, carefully sketching cadavers for study for medical reference books. Within her artistic workspace, she created work that defied simple classification – often using the very same tools. “She created these highly accurate, technical drawings which were used in medical textbooks,” explains a curator of a new retrospective of Schubert’s work. “She was completely central to that discipline … She showed no hesitation in the presence of dissections.” Her anatomical drawings, comments a arts scholar, are still published in handbooks for anatomy students currently in Croatia. The Bleeding of Two Worlds A split career path was not rare for Yugoslav artists, who rarely had access to a commercial art market. But the way these two worlds bled into each other was. The medical knives for anatomical dissection became instruments for slicing canvas. Surgical tape designed for medical use held her perforated artworks together. The test tubes typically reserved for laboratory samples transformed into containers for her life story. A Frustration That Cut Deep During the beginning of the 1970s, Schubert was initially operating within conventional painting boundaries. She produced meticulous, hyperrealistic still lifes in acrylic and oil paints of sweets and salt and sugar shakers. Yet, irritation had been festering since her training. At Zagreb’s Academy of Fine Arts, she’d been forced to paint nudes. “I was compelled to stab the knife through the fabric, it truly frustrated me, that tight canvas where I was expected to express myself,” she confided in a researcher, among the rare individuals she spoke with. “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 before taking a medical scalpel and making hundreds of deliberate, precise cuts. Afterwards, she peeled back the severed canvas to expose the underside, creating works she documented with forensic precision. She dated each one to underscore that they were actions. In one 1977 series of photographs, called Self-Portrait With a Perforated Work, she inserted her features, hair, and digits through the openings, transforming her physical self into creative matter. “Yes, all my art has a character of dissection … dissection akin to a life study,” Schubert answered regarding the works' significance. According to a trusted associate and academic, this was a revelation – a glimpse into the mind of an elusive figure. A Dual Existence, Inextricably Linked Art commentators in Croatia often viewed her twin professions as wholly divided: the pioneering creator in one sphere, the medical illustrator who paid the bills on the other. “I have always believed that her dual selves were intimately linked,” explains a confidant. “One cannot be employed for three decades in an anatomy department from eight in the morning until three in the afternoon and not be influenced by what you see there.” 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, she made a collection of angular works – geometric shapes, subsequently labeled. Contemporary critics categorized them under the trendy neo-geo label. Yet, the actual inspiration was found subsequently, when cataloguing Schubert’s estate. “I asked her, how do you produce the trapeziums?” recalls a friend. “Her response was straightforward: it's a human face.” The distinctive hues – termed “Schubert red” and “Schubert blue” by peers – were the exact shades employed to depict cervical arteries in medical texts for a surgical anatomy textbook employed throughout European medical schools. “I realised that those two colours appeared at the same time,” the narrative adds. 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 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 compelled to transgress – to engage with truly ephemeral substances as a response to art that had metaphorically withered. An artwork dating to 1979, One Hundred Roses, saw her strip a hundred roses of their petals. She braided the stems into round arrangements positioning the floral remnants in the center. When observed in a curatorial context, it still held its power – 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 prefer to stay cryptic, to hide my intentions,” Schubert confided during one of her final conversations. Mystery was her method. She would sometimes exhibit fake works while hiding originals under her bed. She eradicated specific works, keeping merely autographed copies. Although she participated in global art events and receiving acclaim as an innovator, she conducted hardly any media talks and her art was predominantly unrecognized abroad. A present retrospective marks her first significant external showcase. Addressing the Trauma of Battle Then came the 1990s, and the Yugoslav Wars. Violence reached Zagreb itself. The artist answered with a group of mixed-media works. She glued journalistic imagery and type onto surfaces. She photocopied and enlarged them. Then she painted over everything in acrylic – rectangular forms reminiscent of scanning lines. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|