Edita Schubert led a dual existence. Over a period spanning thirty years, the late Croatian artist was employed by the Anatomy Institute at the medical school of the University of Zagreb, carefully sketching human anatomical specimens for medical reference books. Within her artistic workspace, she created work that defied simple classification – regularly utilizing the exact implements.
“She was producing these really precise, technical illustrations which were used in anatomy guides,” says a director of a current show of Schubert’s work. “She was deeply immersed in that work … She was entirely comfortable in the dissection room.” Her illustrations of human anatomy, notes a exhibition curator, are still featured in manuals for medical students in Croatia today.The Bleeding of Two Worlds
Schubert’s dual vocation wasn’t unusual for artists from Yugoslavia, who often lacked a viable art market. Yet, the fusion of these two domains was distinctive. The surgical blades for precise cuts on bodies became instruments for slicing canvas. The medical tape meant for wound dressing held her perforated artworks together. Laboratory tubes commonly used for samples became vessels for her autobiography.
An Artistic Restlessness
At the start of the seventies, Schubert was still working within the confines of traditional painting. Her work included detailed, photorealistic compositions 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, the curriculum mandated life drawing. “I was compelled to stab the knife through the fabric, it genuinely irritated me, that stretched surface I was forced to communicate upon,” she confided in a researcher, in a seldom-granted conversation. “I used the knife to pierce the canvas, not a paintbrush.”
Where Anatomical Practice Meets Creation
In 1977, that urge took literal form. Schubert produced eleven large canvases. Each was coated in a single shade of blue prior to picking up a surgical blade and making hundreds of deliberate, precise cuts. She then folded back the sliced fabric to reveal its reverse, producing pieces recorded with clinical accuracy. She dated each one to underscore that they were actions. Through a set of photos created in 1977, entitled Self-Portrait Behind a Perforated Canvas, she inserted her features, hair, and digits through the openings, making her own form part of the artwork.
“Absolutely, my work possesses a dissective quality … dissection like an evening nude,” she responded to inquiries about the pieces. For an intimate confidant and researcher, this statement was illuminating – a hint from a creator who seldom offered commentary.A Dual Existence, Inextricably Linked
Art commentators in Croatia often viewed her twin professions as wholly divided: the radical innovator in one corner, the technical draftsman funding her life in the other. “I have always believed that her dual selves were intimately linked,” explains a confidant. “It's impossible to spend 35 years at the Anatomy Institute from early morning to mid-afternoon without being affected by the surroundings.”
Biological Inspirations Beneath the Surface
The revelatory nature of a present showcase is how it traces these medical undercurrents through works that, at first glance, seem entirely abstract. In the mid-1980s, Schubert produced a series of geometric paintings – trapeziums, as they came to be known. Art writers grouped them with the popular geometric abstraction trend. Yet, the actual inspiration was found subsequently, while examining her personal papers.
“I asked her, how do you produce the trapeziums?” remembers a scholar. “Her response was straightforward: it's a human face.” Those characteristic colours – known among associates as her personal red and blue – were the exact shades she’d been using to illustrate the two main arteries of the neck for a surgical anatomy textbook employed throughout European medical schools. “I realised that those two colours appeared at the same time,” the explanation continues. 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 arranged collections of bone, petals, spices and ash on floors. Inquired regarding the change to ephemeral components, she expressed that the art world had become “barren theoretically”. She felt an urge to break boundaries – to utilize genuinely perishable matter as an answer to conceptually sterile work.
One work from 1979, 100 Roses, featured her denuding a century of flowers. She intertwined the stalks into circular forms with the leaves and petals arranged inside. Upon being viewed while organizing a show, it still held its power – the leaves and petals now completely dried out yet astonishingly whole. “The scent of roses persists,” a commentator notes. “The pigmentation survives.”
A Practitioner of Secrecy
“My aim is to remain enigmatic, to conceal my process,” Schubert confided during one of her final conversations. Mystery was her method. On occasion, she displayed counterfeit pieces concealing genuine artworks beneath her bed. She destroyed certain drawings, keeping merely autographed copies. Despite exhibiting at major international biennales and receiving acclaim as an innovator, she granted virtually no press access and her art was predominantly unrecognized abroad. A present retrospective marks her first significant external showcase.
Confronting the Violence of War
Subsequently, the nineties dawned with the outbreak of conflict. Hostilities impacted the capital directly. She reacted with a collection of assembled pieces. 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|
