🔗 Share this article ‘I had to plunge the knife into the canvas’: The artist Edita Schubert wielded her scalpel like creatives handle a paintbrush. The life of Edita Schubert was one of two distinct halves. For more than three decades, the esteemed Croatian creator worked at the Institute of Anatomy at the Zagreb University’s faculty of medicine, meticulously drawing dissected human bodies for surgical textbooks. In her studio, she made art that resisted every attempt at categorisation – often using the very same tools. “Her work involved crafting these meticulous, technical diagrams which were used in medical textbooks,” notes a organizer of a fresh exhibition of the artist's oeuvre. “She was deeply immersed in that work … She was totally unfazed about being in dissections.” Her illustrations of human anatomy, observes a arts scholar, are continually used in textbooks for anatomy students currently in Croatia. Where Two Realms Converged Schubert’s dual vocation wasn’t unusual for creatives in the former Yugoslavia, who rarely had access to a commercial art market. But the way these two worlds bled into each other was. The scalpels she used to make clean incisions in cadavers were transformed into tools for cutting fabric. Adhesive tape intended for bandages bound her fragmented pieces. The test tubes typically reserved for laboratory samples became vessels for her autobiography. A Frustration That Cut Deep At the start of the seventies, Schubert was still working within the confines of traditional painting. She produced meticulous, hyperrealistic still lifes in acrylic and oil paints of confectionery and salt and sugar shakers. Yet, irritation had been festering since her training. During her time at the Zagreb art school, she was required to depict nude figures. “I had to plunge the knife into the canvas, it simply got on my nerves, that taut surface on which I had to talk about something,” she once explained to a scholar, among the rare individuals she spoke with. “I stabbed the knife into the canvas instead of the brush.” Where Anatomical Practice Meets Creation By 1977, this impulse manifested physically. She made eleven big pieces. All were rendered in a uniform blue hue prior to picking up a surgical blade and performing countless measured, exact slices. She then folded back the sliced fabric to show the backside, producing pieces recorded with clinical accuracy. Marking each with a date highlighted their status as performances. In a photographic series from that year, called Self-Portrait With a Perforated Work, she pressed her visage, locks, and hands into the cuts, transforming her physical self into creative matter. “Indeed, my entire oeuvre carries a sense of dissection … dissection like an evening nude,” Schubert answered regarding the works' significance. For an intimate confidant and researcher, this explanation was a key insight – a hint from a creator who seldom offered commentary. Two Lives, Deeply Connected Art commentators in Croatia often viewed her twin professions as wholly divided: the experimental avant garde artist on one side, the technical draftsman funding her life in the other. “My opinion since then has been that these two identities were profoundly intertwined,” states a scholar. “You can’t work for 35 years in the Institute of Anatomy from eight in the morning until three in the afternoon without being affected by the surroundings.” Biological Inspirations Beneath the Surface 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 – trapeziums, as they came to be known. Contemporary critics categorized them under the trendy neo-geo label. However, the reality was uncovered much later, during an archival review of her possessions. “I inquired, how are these shapes created?” recalls a friend. “Her response was straightforward: it's a human face.” The signature tones – termed “Schubert red” and “Schubert blue” by peers – were identical tints used for drawing neck vasculature in anatomy books for a surgical anatomy textbook utilized in medical faculties across Europe. “It became clear those hues emerged concurrently,” the account notes. The shaped canvases were essentially distilled anatomical studies – painted while she worked on anatomical illustrations by day. Embracing Ephemeral Elements In the late 70s and early 80s, the artist's work shifted direction again. She initiated works using wood lashed with straps. She composed displays of skeletal fragments, flower parts, herbs and soot. Questioned about the move to natural substances, she expressed that the art world had become “barren theoretically”. She was driven to cross lines – to utilize genuinely perishable matter as an answer to conceptually sterile work. A 1979 piece entitled 100 Roses, involved her removing petals from a hundred blooms. She wove the stems into circles on the ground placing the foliage and petals within. When observed in a curatorial context, the work maintained its impact – the floral elements now totally preserved but miraculously intact. “The aroma remains,” a viewer remarks. “The pigmentation survives.” A Practitioner of Secrecy “I always want to be mysterious, not to reveal what I’m doing,” she revealed in terminal-year interviews. Obscurity was her technique. On occasion, she displayed counterfeit pieces concealing genuine artworks beneath her bed. She eradicated specific works, keeping merely autographed copies. Although she participated in global art events and receiving acclaim as an innovator, she granted virtually no press access and her work remained largely unknown outside her region. An ongoing display represents the initial large-scale presentation of her work internationally. Confronting the Violence of War Then came the 1990s, and the Yugoslav Wars. Violence reached Zagreb itself. Schubert responded with a series of collages. She adhered press images and headlines onto panels. She duplicated and expanded them. Subsequently, she overpainted all elements – black bars resembling barcodes. {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 worked at the Institute of Anatomy at the Zagreb University’s faculty of medicine, meticulously drawing dissected human bodies for surgical textbooks. In her studio, she made art that resisted every attempt at categorisation – often using the very same tools. “Her work involved crafting these meticulous, technical diagrams which were used in medical textbooks,” notes a organizer of a fresh exhibition of the artist's oeuvre. “She was deeply immersed in that work … She was totally unfazed about being in dissections.” Her illustrations of human anatomy, observes a arts scholar, are continually used in textbooks for anatomy students currently in Croatia. Where Two Realms Converged Schubert’s dual vocation wasn’t unusual for creatives in the former Yugoslavia, who rarely had access to a commercial art market. But the way these two worlds bled into each other was. The scalpels she used to make clean incisions in cadavers were transformed into tools for cutting fabric. Adhesive tape intended for bandages bound her fragmented pieces. The test tubes typically reserved for laboratory samples became vessels for her autobiography. A Frustration That Cut Deep At the start of the seventies, Schubert was still working within the confines of traditional painting. She produced meticulous, hyperrealistic still lifes in acrylic and oil paints of confectionery and salt and sugar shakers. Yet, irritation had been festering since her training. During her time at the Zagreb art school, she was required to depict nude figures. “I had to plunge the knife into the canvas, it simply got on my nerves, that taut surface on which I had to talk about something,” she once explained to a scholar, among the rare individuals she spoke with. “I stabbed the knife into the canvas instead of the brush.” Where Anatomical Practice Meets Creation By 1977, this impulse manifested physically. She made eleven big pieces. All were rendered in a uniform blue hue prior to picking up a surgical blade and performing countless measured, exact slices. She then folded back the sliced fabric to show the backside, producing pieces recorded with clinical accuracy. Marking each with a date highlighted their status as performances. In a photographic series from that year, called Self-Portrait With a Perforated Work, she pressed her visage, locks, and hands into the cuts, transforming her physical self into creative matter. “Indeed, my entire oeuvre carries a sense of dissection … dissection like an evening nude,” Schubert answered regarding the works' significance. For an intimate confidant and researcher, this explanation was a key insight – a hint from a creator who seldom offered commentary. Two Lives, Deeply Connected Art commentators in Croatia often viewed her twin professions as wholly divided: the experimental avant garde artist on one side, the technical draftsman funding her life in the other. “My opinion since then has been that these two identities were profoundly intertwined,” states a scholar. “You can’t work for 35 years in the Institute of Anatomy from eight in the morning until three in the afternoon without being affected by the surroundings.” Biological Inspirations Beneath the Surface 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 – trapeziums, as they came to be known. Contemporary critics categorized them under the trendy neo-geo label. However, the reality was uncovered much later, during an archival review of her possessions. “I inquired, how are these shapes created?” recalls a friend. “Her response was straightforward: it's a human face.” The signature tones – termed “Schubert red” and “Schubert blue” by peers – were identical tints used for drawing neck vasculature in anatomy books for a surgical anatomy textbook utilized in medical faculties across Europe. “It became clear those hues emerged concurrently,” the account notes. The shaped canvases were essentially distilled anatomical studies – painted while she worked on anatomical illustrations by day. Embracing Ephemeral Elements In the late 70s and early 80s, the artist's work shifted direction again. She initiated works using wood lashed with straps. She composed displays of skeletal fragments, flower parts, herbs and soot. Questioned about the move to natural substances, she expressed that the art world had become “barren theoretically”. She was driven to cross lines – to utilize genuinely perishable matter as an answer to conceptually sterile work. A 1979 piece entitled 100 Roses, involved her removing petals from a hundred blooms. She wove the stems into circles on the ground placing the foliage and petals within. When observed in a curatorial context, the work maintained its impact – the floral elements now totally preserved but miraculously intact. “The aroma remains,” a viewer remarks. “The pigmentation survives.” A Practitioner of Secrecy “I always want to be mysterious, not to reveal what I’m doing,” she revealed in terminal-year interviews. Obscurity was her technique. On occasion, she displayed counterfeit pieces concealing genuine artworks beneath her bed. She eradicated specific works, keeping merely autographed copies. Although she participated in global art events and receiving acclaim as an innovator, she granted virtually no press access and her work remained largely unknown outside her region. An ongoing display represents the initial large-scale presentation of her work internationally. Confronting the Violence of War Then came the 1990s, and the Yugoslav Wars. Violence reached Zagreb itself. Schubert responded with a series of collages. She adhered press images and headlines onto panels. She duplicated and expanded them. Subsequently, she overpainted all elements – black bars resembling barcodes. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|