🔗 Share this article ‘I was compelled to drive the blade into the canvas’: The artist Edita Schubert wielded her scalpel like painters use a brush. Edita Schubert led a dual existence. Throughout a career lasting over thirty years, the late Croatian artist worked at the Institute of Anatomy at the medical school of the University of Zagreb, carefully sketching cadavers for study for textbooks for surgeons. Within her artistic workspace, she made art that resisted every attempt at categorisation – regularly utilizing the exact implements. “She created these highly accurate, technical drawings which were used in medical textbooks,” explains a curator of a new retrospective of her artistic output. “She was right in the middle of that practice … She was entirely comfortable in the dissection room.” Her illustrations of human anatomy, notes a exhibition curator, are still published in handbooks for anatomy 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 scalpels she used to make clean incisions in cadavers turned into devices for perforating paintings. Surgical tape designed for medical use secured her sliced creations. Glass vials usually meant for scientific specimens evolved into receptacles for her personal history. A Creative Urge At the start of the seventies, Schubert was initially operating within conventional painting boundaries. She crafted precise, ultra-realistic arrangements in acrylic and oil paints of confectionery 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 needed to drive the blade into the painting, it truly frustrated me, that taut surface on which I had to talk about something,” she later told an art historian, among the rare individuals she spoke with. “I thrust the blade into the painting in place of a brush.” The Artistic Performance of Cutting That year, this desire became a concrete action. She made eleven big pieces. All were rendered in a uniform blue hue before taking a medical scalpel and executing numerous intentional, accurate incisions. Subsequently, she turned back the cut material to expose the underside, creating works she documented with forensic precision. Marking each with a date highlighted their status as performances. Through a set of photos created in 1977, titled Self-Portrait Through a Sliced Painting, she pushed her face, hair, and fingers through the perforations, transforming her physical self into creative matter. “Yes, all my art has a character of dissection … dissection akin to a life study,” she responded to inquiries about the pieces. For an intimate confidant and researcher, this explanation was a key insight – a glimpse into the mind of an elusive figure. A Dual Existence, Inextricably Linked Art commentators in Croatia often viewed Schubert’s two lives as entirely separate: the radical innovator in one corner, the anatomical artist supporting herself separately. “My opinion since then has been that her dual selves were intimately linked,” states a scholar. “One cannot be employed for three decades in an anatomy department daily for hours on end without being affected by the surroundings.” Biological Inspirations Beneath the Surface The revelatory nature of a present showcase is the way it follows these anatomical influences in pieces that initially appear purely non-representational. During the middle of the 1980s, she made a collection of angular works – geometric shapes, subsequently labeled. Art writers grouped them with the popular geometric abstraction trend. However, the reality was uncovered much later, during an archival review of her possessions. “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 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 explanation continues. The geometric abstractions were, in fact, highly stylised human bodies – created concurrently with her daytime medical drawing. Embracing Ephemeral Elements In the late 70s and early 80s, the artist's work shifted direction again. She began creating installations from branches bound with leather. She composed displays of skeletal fragments, flower parts, herbs and soot. Questioned about the move to natural substances, Schubert explained that art “was completely desiccated in the concept”. She was driven to cross lines – to work with actual decaying material 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 encountered during exhibition preparation, the piece retained its potency – the floral elements now totally preserved but miraculously intact. “The aroma remains,” a commentator notes. “The colour is still there.” A Practitioner of Secrecy “My aim is to remain enigmatic, to conceal my process,” she revealed in terminal-year interviews. Mystery was her method. She would sometimes exhibit fake works stashing authentic works out of sight. She eliminated select sketches, keeping merely autographed copies. 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. Responding to the Horrors of Conflict 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 photocopied and enlarged 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 late Croatian artist worked at the Institute of Anatomy at the medical school of the University of Zagreb, carefully sketching cadavers for study for textbooks for surgeons. Within her artistic workspace, she made art that resisted every attempt at categorisation – regularly utilizing the exact implements. “She created these highly accurate, technical drawings which were used in medical textbooks,” explains a curator of a new retrospective of her artistic output. “She was right in the middle of that practice … She was entirely comfortable in the dissection room.” Her illustrations of human anatomy, notes a exhibition curator, are still published in handbooks for anatomy 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 scalpels she used to make clean incisions in cadavers turned into devices for perforating paintings. Surgical tape designed for medical use secured her sliced creations. Glass vials usually meant for scientific specimens evolved into receptacles for her personal history. A Creative Urge At the start of the seventies, Schubert was initially operating within conventional painting boundaries. She crafted precise, ultra-realistic arrangements in acrylic and oil paints of confectionery 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 needed to drive the blade into the painting, it truly frustrated me, that taut surface on which I had to talk about something,” she later told an art historian, among the rare individuals she spoke with. “I thrust the blade into the painting in place of a brush.” The Artistic Performance of Cutting That year, this desire became a concrete action. She made eleven big pieces. All were rendered in a uniform blue hue before taking a medical scalpel and executing numerous intentional, accurate incisions. Subsequently, she turned back the cut material to expose the underside, creating works she documented with forensic precision. Marking each with a date highlighted their status as performances. Through a set of photos created in 1977, titled Self-Portrait Through a Sliced Painting, she pushed her face, hair, and fingers through the perforations, transforming her physical self into creative matter. “Yes, all my art has a character of dissection … dissection akin to a life study,” she responded to inquiries about the pieces. For an intimate confidant and researcher, this explanation was a key insight – a glimpse into the mind of an elusive figure. A Dual Existence, Inextricably Linked Art commentators in Croatia often viewed Schubert’s two lives as entirely separate: the radical innovator in one corner, the anatomical artist supporting herself separately. “My opinion since then has been that her dual selves were intimately linked,” states a scholar. “One cannot be employed for three decades in an anatomy department daily for hours on end without being affected by the surroundings.” Biological Inspirations Beneath the Surface The revelatory nature of a present showcase is the way it follows these anatomical influences in pieces that initially appear purely non-representational. During the middle of the 1980s, she made a collection of angular works – geometric shapes, subsequently labeled. Art writers grouped them with the popular geometric abstraction trend. However, the reality was uncovered much later, during an archival review of her possessions. “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 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 explanation continues. The geometric abstractions were, in fact, highly stylised human bodies – created concurrently with her daytime medical drawing. Embracing Ephemeral Elements In the late 70s and early 80s, the artist's work shifted direction again. She began creating installations from branches bound with leather. She composed displays of skeletal fragments, flower parts, herbs and soot. Questioned about the move to natural substances, Schubert explained that art “was completely desiccated in the concept”. She was driven to cross lines – to work with actual decaying material 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 encountered during exhibition preparation, the piece retained its potency – the floral elements now totally preserved but miraculously intact. “The aroma remains,” a commentator notes. “The colour is still there.” A Practitioner of Secrecy “My aim is to remain enigmatic, to conceal my process,” she revealed in terminal-year interviews. Mystery was her method. She would sometimes exhibit fake works stashing authentic works out of sight. She eliminated select sketches, keeping merely autographed copies. 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. Responding to the Horrors of Conflict 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 photocopied and enlarged them. Then she painted over everything in acrylic – black bars resembling barcodes. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|