🔗 Share this article ‘I felt forced to stab the knife through the canvas’: The artist Edita Schubert used her surgical blade like other artists wield a brush. The life of Edita Schubert was one of two distinct halves. Throughout a career lasting over thirty years, the artist from Croatia held a position at the Institute of Anatomy at the University of Zagreb’s medical faculty, precisely illustrating cadavers for study for textbooks for surgeons. In her studio, she made art that resisted every attempt at categorisation – frequently employing the identical instruments. “She was producing these really precise, technical illustrations which were used in surgical handbooks,” notes a director of a current show of her artistic output. “She was deeply immersed in that work … She was entirely comfortable in the dissection room.” Her anatomical drawings, observes a arts scholar, are continually used in textbooks for surgical trainees currently in Croatia. The Bleeding of Two Worlds Having two professional lives was not uncommon for Yugoslav artists, who often lacked a viable 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. Surgical tape designed for medical use held her perforated artworks together. Laboratory tubes commonly used for samples became vessels for her autobiography. A Creative Urge During the beginning of the 1970s, Schubert was still creating within the limits of classic art. Her work included detailed, photorealistic compositions in paints and mediums of candies and tabletop items. 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 simply got on my nerves, that stretched surface I was forced to communicate upon,” she confided in a researcher, among the rare individuals she spoke with. “I thrust the blade into the painting in place of a brush.” Where Anatomical Practice Meets Creation In 1977, that urge took literal form. Schubert produced eleven large canvases. All were rendered in a uniform blue hue prior to picking up a surgical blade and performing countless measured, exact slices. Subsequently, she turned back the cut material to reveal its reverse, fashioning artworks catalogued with scientific detail. She timestamped each to emphasize their nature as events. In one 1977 series of photographs, called Self-Portrait With a Perforated Work, she pressed her visage, locks, and hands into the cuts, turning her own body into artistic material. “Yes, all my art has a character of dissection … anatomical analysis similar to figure drawing,” she responded to inquiries about the pieces. 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 Croatian critics have tended to treat her twin professions as wholly divided: the radical innovator in one corner, the medical illustrator who paid the bills on the other. “My opinion since then has been that those two personalities were deeply, deeply connected,” states a scholar. “It's impossible to spend 35 years at the Anatomy Institute from early morning to mid-afternoon and remain untouched by the environment.” Anatomical Echoes in Geometric Shapes What makes a current exhibition particularly revelatory is the way it follows these anatomical influences in pieces that initially appear purely non-representational. During the middle of the 1980s, Schubert produced a series of geometric paintings – trapezoidal forms, as they were later termed. Art writers grouped them with the popular geometric abstraction trend. But the truth was discovered only years later, when cataloguing Schubert’s estate. “I inquired, how are these shapes created?” states an associate. “Her response was straightforward: it's a human face.” The signature tones – what colleagues called “Schubert red” and “Schubert blue” – matched the precise colors used for drawing neck vasculature in anatomy books within a reference book for surgeons employed throughout European medical schools. “It became clear those hues emerged concurrently,” the explanation continues. The geometric abstractions were, in fact, highly stylised human bodies – 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 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. An artwork dating to 1979, One Hundred Roses, featured her denuding a century of flowers. She wove the stems into circles on the ground positioning the floral remnants in the center. When encountered during exhibition preparation, the piece retained its potency – the floral elements now totally preserved though wonderfully undamaged. “You can still smell the roses,” a viewer remarks. “The colour is still there.” A Practitioner of Secrecy “I always want to be mysterious, not to reveal what I’m doing,” she revealed in terminal-year interviews. Mystery was her method. She would sometimes exhibit fake works while hiding originals under her bed. She destroyed certain drawings, only retaining signed reproductions. Although she participated in global art events and receiving acclaim as an innovator, she conducted hardly any media talks and her output stayed mostly obscure internationally. A current museum exhibition is her first major solo show outside her homeland. 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 pasted newspaper photographs and text directly on to board. She photocopied and enlarged them. Then she obscured the surface with paint – rectangular forms reminiscent of scanning lines. {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 held a position at the Institute of Anatomy at the University of Zagreb’s medical faculty, precisely illustrating cadavers for study for textbooks for surgeons. In her studio, she made art that resisted every attempt at categorisation – frequently employing the identical instruments. “She was producing these really precise, technical illustrations which were used in surgical handbooks,” notes a director of a current show of her artistic output. “She was deeply immersed in that work … She was entirely comfortable in the dissection room.” Her anatomical drawings, observes a arts scholar, are continually used in textbooks for surgical trainees currently in Croatia. The Bleeding of Two Worlds Having two professional lives was not uncommon for Yugoslav artists, who often lacked a viable 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. Surgical tape designed for medical use held her perforated artworks together. Laboratory tubes commonly used for samples became vessels for her autobiography. A Creative Urge During the beginning of the 1970s, Schubert was still creating within the limits of classic art. Her work included detailed, photorealistic compositions in paints and mediums of candies and tabletop items. 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 simply got on my nerves, that stretched surface I was forced to communicate upon,” she confided in a researcher, among the rare individuals she spoke with. “I thrust the blade into the painting in place of a brush.” Where Anatomical Practice Meets Creation In 1977, that urge took literal form. Schubert produced eleven large canvases. All were rendered in a uniform blue hue prior to picking up a surgical blade and performing countless measured, exact slices. Subsequently, she turned back the cut material to reveal its reverse, fashioning artworks catalogued with scientific detail. She timestamped each to emphasize their nature as events. In one 1977 series of photographs, called Self-Portrait With a Perforated Work, she pressed her visage, locks, and hands into the cuts, turning her own body into artistic material. “Yes, all my art has a character of dissection … anatomical analysis similar to figure drawing,” she responded to inquiries about the pieces. 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 Croatian critics have tended to treat her twin professions as wholly divided: the radical innovator in one corner, the medical illustrator who paid the bills on the other. “My opinion since then has been that those two personalities were deeply, deeply connected,” states a scholar. “It's impossible to spend 35 years at the Anatomy Institute from early morning to mid-afternoon and remain untouched by the environment.” Anatomical Echoes in Geometric Shapes What makes a current exhibition particularly revelatory is the way it follows these anatomical influences in pieces that initially appear purely non-representational. During the middle of the 1980s, Schubert produced a series of geometric paintings – trapezoidal forms, as they were later termed. Art writers grouped them with the popular geometric abstraction trend. But the truth was discovered only years later, when cataloguing Schubert’s estate. “I inquired, how are these shapes created?” states an associate. “Her response was straightforward: it's a human face.” The signature tones – what colleagues called “Schubert red” and “Schubert blue” – matched the precise colors used for drawing neck vasculature in anatomy books within a reference book for surgeons employed throughout European medical schools. “It became clear those hues emerged concurrently,” the explanation continues. The geometric abstractions were, in fact, highly stylised human bodies – 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 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. An artwork dating to 1979, One Hundred Roses, featured her denuding a century of flowers. She wove the stems into circles on the ground positioning the floral remnants in the center. When encountered during exhibition preparation, the piece retained its potency – the floral elements now totally preserved though wonderfully undamaged. “You can still smell the roses,” a viewer remarks. “The colour is still there.” A Practitioner of Secrecy “I always want to be mysterious, not to reveal what I’m doing,” she revealed in terminal-year interviews. Mystery was her method. She would sometimes exhibit fake works while hiding originals under her bed. She destroyed certain drawings, only retaining signed reproductions. Although she participated in global art events and receiving acclaim as an innovator, she conducted hardly any media talks and her output stayed mostly obscure internationally. A current museum exhibition is her first major solo show outside her homeland. 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 pasted newspaper photographs and text directly on to board. She photocopied and enlarged them. Then she obscured the surface with paint – rectangular forms reminiscent of scanning lines. {Geometric forms obscured the images beneath|Angular shapes hid the pictures below|