🔗 Share this article ‘I had to plunge the knife into the canvas’: The artist Edita Schubert brandished her medical instrument like creatives handle a paintbrush. Edita Schubert led a dual existence. 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 textbooks for surgeons. In her studio, she made art that resisted every attempt at categorisation – regularly utilizing the exact implements. “Her work involved crafting these meticulous, technical diagrams which were used in anatomy guides,” 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, observes a museum curator, are still featured in manuals for surgical trainees 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. 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 held her perforated artworks together. Laboratory tubes commonly used for samples evolved into receptacles for her personal history. A Frustration That Cut Deep During the beginning of the 1970s, Schubert was still working within the confines of traditional painting. She produced meticulous, hyperrealistic still lifes in oil and acrylic of candies 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 had to plunge the knife into the canvas, it truly frustrated me, that stretched surface I was forced to communicate upon,” she once explained to a scholar, among the rare individuals she spoke with. “I thrust the blade into the painting in place of a brush.” The Artistic Performance of Cutting In 1977, that urge took literal form. The artist created eleven sizable paintings. Each was coated in a single shade of blue prior to picking up a surgical blade and performing countless measured, exact slices. She then folded back the sliced fabric to show the backside, fashioning artworks catalogued with scientific detail. 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, turning her own body into artistic material. “Yes, all my art has a character of dissection … dissection akin to a life study,” Schubert answered regarding the works' significance. For a close friend and scholar, this was a revelation – a clue from an artist who rarely explained herself. Two Lives, Deeply Connected Croatian critics have tended to treat Schubert’s two lives as entirely separate: the pioneering creator in one sphere, the technical draftsman funding her life in the other. “I have always believed that these two identities were profoundly intertwined,” explains a confidant. “One cannot be employed for three decades in an anatomy department daily for hours on end and not be influenced by what you see there.” Medical Undercurrents in Abstract Forms The revelatory nature of a present showcase is the way it follows these anatomical influences 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. However, the reality was uncovered much later, when cataloguing Schubert’s estate. “The question was posed: how are these forms made?” remembers a scholar. “Her response was straightforward: it's a human face.” The signature tones – what colleagues called “Schubert red” and “Schubert blue” – were identical tints employed to depict cervical arteries in medical texts for a surgical anatomy textbook employed throughout European medical schools. “The connection was that both colors surfaced simultaneously,” the narrative adds. The angular paintings were actually abstracted human forms – painted while she worked on anatomical illustrations by day. A Turn Towards the Organic Towards the end of the seventies and start of the eighties, her creative approach changed once more. She began creating installations from branches bound with leather. She composed displays of skeletal fragments, flower parts, herbs and soot. When asked why she’d shifted to such organic materials, she expressed that the art world had become “barren theoretically”. She felt an urge to break boundaries – to engage with truly ephemeral substances as a response to art that had metaphorically withered. A 1979 piece entitled 100 Roses, saw her strip a hundred roses of their petals. She wove the stems into circles on the ground positioning the floral remnants in the center. When observed in a curatorial context, the piece retained its potency – the leaves and petals now completely dried out yet astonishingly whole. “The scent of roses persists,” one observer marvels. “The colour is still there.” A Practitioner of Secrecy “My aim is to remain enigmatic, to conceal my process,” the artist shared in late-life discussions. Obscurity was her technique. On occasion, she displayed counterfeit pieces concealing genuine artworks beneath her bed. She destroyed certain drawings, leaving only signed photocopies in their place. Although she participated in global art events 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. War came to her city. Schubert responded with a series of collages. She adhered press images and headlines onto panels. She photocopied and enlarged them. Subsequently, she overpainted all elements – rectangular forms reminiscent of scanning lines. {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 worked at the Institute of Anatomy at the medical school of the University of Zagreb, carefully sketching dissected human bodies for textbooks for surgeons. In her studio, she made art that resisted every attempt at categorisation – regularly utilizing the exact implements. “Her work involved crafting these meticulous, technical diagrams which were used in anatomy guides,” 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, observes a museum curator, are still featured in manuals for surgical trainees 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. 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 held her perforated artworks together. Laboratory tubes commonly used for samples evolved into receptacles for her personal history. A Frustration That Cut Deep During the beginning of the 1970s, Schubert was still working within the confines of traditional painting. She produced meticulous, hyperrealistic still lifes in oil and acrylic of candies 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 had to plunge the knife into the canvas, it truly frustrated me, that stretched surface I was forced to communicate upon,” she once explained to a scholar, among the rare individuals she spoke with. “I thrust the blade into the painting in place of a brush.” The Artistic Performance of Cutting In 1977, that urge took literal form. The artist created eleven sizable paintings. Each was coated in a single shade of blue prior to picking up a surgical blade and performing countless measured, exact slices. She then folded back the sliced fabric to show the backside, fashioning artworks catalogued with scientific detail. 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, turning her own body into artistic material. “Yes, all my art has a character of dissection … dissection akin to a life study,” Schubert answered regarding the works' significance. For a close friend and scholar, this was a revelation – a clue from an artist who rarely explained herself. Two Lives, Deeply Connected Croatian critics have tended to treat Schubert’s two lives as entirely separate: the pioneering creator in one sphere, the technical draftsman funding her life in the other. “I have always believed that these two identities were profoundly intertwined,” explains a confidant. “One cannot be employed for three decades in an anatomy department daily for hours on end and not be influenced by what you see there.” Medical Undercurrents in Abstract Forms The revelatory nature of a present showcase is the way it follows these anatomical influences 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. However, the reality was uncovered much later, when cataloguing Schubert’s estate. “The question was posed: how are these forms made?” remembers a scholar. “Her response was straightforward: it's a human face.” The signature tones – what colleagues called “Schubert red” and “Schubert blue” – were identical tints employed to depict cervical arteries in medical texts for a surgical anatomy textbook employed throughout European medical schools. “The connection was that both colors surfaced simultaneously,” the narrative adds. The angular paintings were actually abstracted human forms – painted while she worked on anatomical illustrations by day. A Turn Towards the Organic Towards the end of the seventies and start of the eighties, her creative approach changed once more. She began creating installations from branches bound with leather. She composed displays of skeletal fragments, flower parts, herbs and soot. When asked why she’d shifted to such organic materials, she expressed that the art world had become “barren theoretically”. She felt an urge to break boundaries – to engage with truly ephemeral substances as a response to art that had metaphorically withered. A 1979 piece entitled 100 Roses, saw her strip a hundred roses of their petals. She wove the stems into circles on the ground positioning the floral remnants in the center. When observed in a curatorial context, the piece retained its potency – the leaves and petals now completely dried out yet astonishingly whole. “The scent of roses persists,” one observer marvels. “The colour is still there.” A Practitioner of Secrecy “My aim is to remain enigmatic, to conceal my process,” the artist shared in late-life discussions. Obscurity was her technique. On occasion, she displayed counterfeit pieces concealing genuine artworks beneath her bed. She destroyed certain drawings, leaving only signed photocopies in their place. Although she participated in global art events 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. War came to her city. Schubert responded with a series of collages. She adhered press images and headlines onto panels. She photocopied and enlarged them. Subsequently, she overpainted all elements – rectangular forms reminiscent of scanning lines. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|