🔗 Share this article ‘I was compelled to drive the blade into the canvas’: Edita Schubert used her surgical blade like painters use a brush. The life of Edita Schubert was one of two distinct halves. Throughout a career lasting over thirty years, the artist from Croatia worked at the Department of Anatomy at the Zagreb University’s faculty of medicine, meticulously drawing 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 was producing these really precise, technical illustrations which were used in anatomy guides,” explains a director of a current show of Schubert’s work. “She was completely central to that discipline … She was totally unfazed about being in dissections.” Her anatomical drawings, comments a exhibition curator, are still featured in manuals for anatomy students currently in Croatia. The Bleeding of Two Worlds Schubert’s dual vocation wasn’t unusual for Yugoslav artists, who often lacked a viable art market. However, the manner in which these spheres merged was unique. The surgical blades for precise cuts on bodies turned into devices for perforating paintings. Surgical tape designed for medical use bound her fragmented pieces. The test tubes typically reserved for laboratory samples became vessels for her autobiography. An Artistic Restlessness At the start of the seventies, Schubert was still creating within the limits of classic art. She produced meticulous, hyperrealistic still lifes in oil and acrylic of sweets and salt and sugar shakers. However, discontent had been growing since her academy years. While studying at the fine arts academy in Zagreb, she was required to depict nude figures. “I was compelled to stab the knife through the fabric, it simply got on my nerves, that taut surface on which I had to talk about something,” she confided in a researcher, in a seldom-granted conversation. “I used the knife to pierce the canvas, not a paintbrush.” The Act of Dissection Becomes Art By 1977, this impulse manifested physically. The artist created eleven sizable paintings. Each was coated in a single shade of blue before taking a medical scalpel and executing numerous intentional, accurate incisions. Subsequently, she turned back the cut material to show the backside, creating works she documented with forensic precision. She timestamped each to emphasize their nature as events. Through a set of photos created in 1977, called Self-Portrait With a Perforated Work, she pushed her face, hair, and fingers through the perforations, making her own form part of the artwork. “Yes, all my art has a character of dissection … dissection akin to a life study,” she responded to inquiries about the pieces. According to a trusted associate and academic, this explanation was a key insight – a clue from an artist who rarely explained herself. Separate Careers, Intertwined Roots Croatian critics have tended to treat the artist's dual roles as completely distinct: the pioneering creator in one sphere, the medical illustrator who paid the bills on the other. “I have always believed that those two personalities were deeply, deeply connected,” explains a confidant. “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.” Medical Undercurrents in Abstract Forms A key insight from a ongoing display 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 – trapezoidal forms, as they were later termed. Art writers grouped them with the popular geometric abstraction trend. Yet, the actual inspiration was found subsequently, when cataloguing Schubert’s estate. “I inquired, how are these shapes created?” remembers a scholar. “She explained simply: they represent a human face.” The signature tones – what colleagues called “Schubert red” and “Schubert blue” – were the exact shades employed to depict cervical arteries in medical texts in a manual for surgical anatomy utilized in medical faculties across Europe. “The connection was that both colors surfaced simultaneously,” the explanation continues. The angular paintings were actually abstracted human forms – painted while she worked on anatomical illustrations by day. A Turn Towards the Organic In the late 70s and early 80s, Schubert’s practice took another turn. She started making assemblages from twigs secured with hide. She positioned gatherings of osseous material, floral remains, seasonings and cinders. When asked why she’d shifted to such organic materials, the artist stated that contemporary art had “dried up intellectually”. She was driven to cross lines – to work with actual decaying material as an answer to conceptually sterile work. One work from 1979, 100 Roses, involved her removing petals from a hundred blooms. She intertwined the stalks into circular forms placing the foliage and petals within. Upon being viewed while organizing a show, it still held its power – the leaves and petals now completely dried out yet astonishingly whole. “You can still smell the roses,” a viewer remarks. “The hue has endured.” 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. Obscurity was her technique. At times, she showed inauthentic creations while hiding originals under her bed. She destroyed certain drawings, only retaining signed reproductions. Although she participated in global art events and gaining recognition as a trailblazer, she granted virtually no press access and her work remained largely unknown outside her region. A present retrospective marks her first significant external showcase. Addressing the Trauma of Battle The 1990s arrived, bringing the Yugoslav Wars. War came to her city. She reacted with a collection of assembled pieces. She glued journalistic imagery and type onto surfaces. She photocopied and enlarged them. Subsequently, she overpainted all elements – dark stripes akin to product codes. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|
The life of Edita Schubert was one of two distinct halves. Throughout a career lasting over thirty years, the artist from Croatia worked at the Department of Anatomy at the Zagreb University’s faculty of medicine, meticulously drawing 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 was producing these really precise, technical illustrations which were used in anatomy guides,” explains a director of a current show of Schubert’s work. “She was completely central to that discipline … She was totally unfazed about being in dissections.” Her anatomical drawings, comments a exhibition curator, are still featured in manuals for anatomy students currently in Croatia. The Bleeding of Two Worlds Schubert’s dual vocation wasn’t unusual for Yugoslav artists, who often lacked a viable art market. However, the manner in which these spheres merged was unique. The surgical blades for precise cuts on bodies turned into devices for perforating paintings. Surgical tape designed for medical use bound her fragmented pieces. The test tubes typically reserved for laboratory samples became vessels for her autobiography. An Artistic Restlessness At the start of the seventies, Schubert was still creating within the limits of classic art. She produced meticulous, hyperrealistic still lifes in oil and acrylic of sweets and salt and sugar shakers. However, discontent had been growing since her academy years. While studying at the fine arts academy in Zagreb, she was required to depict nude figures. “I was compelled to stab the knife through the fabric, it simply got on my nerves, that taut surface on which I had to talk about something,” she confided in a researcher, in a seldom-granted conversation. “I used the knife to pierce the canvas, not a paintbrush.” The Act of Dissection Becomes Art By 1977, this impulse manifested physically. The artist created eleven sizable paintings. Each was coated in a single shade of blue before taking a medical scalpel and executing numerous intentional, accurate incisions. Subsequently, she turned back the cut material to show the backside, creating works she documented with forensic precision. She timestamped each to emphasize their nature as events. Through a set of photos created in 1977, called Self-Portrait With a Perforated Work, she pushed her face, hair, and fingers through the perforations, making her own form part of the artwork. “Yes, all my art has a character of dissection … dissection akin to a life study,” she responded to inquiries about the pieces. According to a trusted associate and academic, this explanation was a key insight – a clue from an artist who rarely explained herself. Separate Careers, Intertwined Roots Croatian critics have tended to treat the artist's dual roles as completely distinct: the pioneering creator in one sphere, the medical illustrator who paid the bills on the other. “I have always believed that those two personalities were deeply, deeply connected,” explains a confidant. “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.” Medical Undercurrents in Abstract Forms A key insight from a ongoing display 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 – trapezoidal forms, as they were later termed. Art writers grouped them with the popular geometric abstraction trend. Yet, the actual inspiration was found subsequently, when cataloguing Schubert’s estate. “I inquired, how are these shapes created?” remembers a scholar. “She explained simply: they represent a human face.” The signature tones – what colleagues called “Schubert red” and “Schubert blue” – were the exact shades employed to depict cervical arteries in medical texts in a manual for surgical anatomy utilized in medical faculties across Europe. “The connection was that both colors surfaced simultaneously,” the explanation continues. The angular paintings were actually abstracted human forms – painted while she worked on anatomical illustrations by day. A Turn Towards the Organic In the late 70s and early 80s, Schubert’s practice took another turn. She started making assemblages from twigs secured with hide. She positioned gatherings of osseous material, floral remains, seasonings and cinders. When asked why she’d shifted to such organic materials, the artist stated that contemporary art had “dried up intellectually”. She was driven to cross lines – to work with actual decaying material as an answer to conceptually sterile work. One work from 1979, 100 Roses, involved her removing petals from a hundred blooms. She intertwined the stalks into circular forms placing the foliage and petals within. Upon being viewed while organizing a show, it still held its power – the leaves and petals now completely dried out yet astonishingly whole. “You can still smell the roses,” a viewer remarks. “The hue has endured.” 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. Obscurity was her technique. At times, she showed inauthentic creations while hiding originals under her bed. She destroyed certain drawings, only retaining signed reproductions. Although she participated in global art events and gaining recognition as a trailblazer, she granted virtually no press access and her work remained largely unknown outside her region. A present retrospective marks her first significant external showcase. Addressing the Trauma of Battle The 1990s arrived, bringing the Yugoslav Wars. War came to her city. She reacted with a collection of assembled pieces. She glued journalistic imagery and type onto surfaces. She photocopied and enlarged them. Subsequently, she overpainted all elements – dark stripes akin to product codes. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|