For over three decades, Edita Schubert led a dual life as a meticulous medical illustrator and an avant-garde artist whose works resisted categorization. Her anatomical drawings, which were used in surgical textbooks, remain published in handbooks for medical students in Croatia to this day. In her studio, she wielded scalpel like other artists wield a brush.
Schubert's frustration with traditional painting had been building since her student days at Zagreb's Academy of Fine Arts, where she was forced to paint nudes. "I had to plunge the knife into the canvas," she later said. This impulse took literal form in 1977 when Schubert produced eleven large canvases, each painted a blue monochrome before making hundreds of deliberate cuts with a medical scalpel.
The works revealed their reverse, creating what was documented with forensic precision. In one series of photographs, entitled Self-Portrait Behind a Perforated Canvas, she pushed her face, hair, and fingers through the perforations, turning her own body into artistic material.
David Crowley, curator of the retrospective exhibition at Muzeum Susch in eastern Switzerland, notes that Schubert's dual vocation wasn't unusual for Yugoslav artists who rarely had access to a commercial art market. However, the way these two worlds bled into each other was. The scalpels she used to make clean incisions in cadavers became instruments for slicing canvas.
Schubert's experimentation took another turn when her sister, Marina, recalls that "the uncertainty of the period, together with the continuous reports of destruction and loss, placed her in a difficult position between her artistic pursuit and the rapidly changing world around her." Schubert responded by partially veiling the wartime newspaper reports through her interventions, layering her own visual language over the stark realities of the time.
One work from 1991, War Image, depicts a photograph of destruction with black bars obscuring the images beneath. This might seem like obscuring or denying a harrowing reality, but it's also a way of slowing down the viewer, forcing them to lean in and look closely at what might otherwise be consumed as media spectacle.
The exhibition's final rooms chart Schubert's confrontation with a different kind of violence. Diagnosed with colon cancer in 1997, she made Biography – five groups of glass test tubes filled with photographs spanning her childhood, travels, artworks, anatomical drawings from medical manuals, and self-portraits titled Phony Smile.
In Horizons (2000), she invited viewers to step inside circular panoramas of places she loved: Zagreb, the Croatian island of Vir, Paris and Venice among others. These final works feel like a protest against being medicalised – a prolongation of her life and memories beyond the clinical gaze she'd spent decades wielding herself.
Walking through the exhibition's 12 galleries, you encounter what seems like several different artists – radical shifts occurring every few years. Perhaps that's exactly how Schubert wanted it. Even now, decades after her death, she remains elusive.
Schubert's frustration with traditional painting had been building since her student days at Zagreb's Academy of Fine Arts, where she was forced to paint nudes. "I had to plunge the knife into the canvas," she later said. This impulse took literal form in 1977 when Schubert produced eleven large canvases, each painted a blue monochrome before making hundreds of deliberate cuts with a medical scalpel.
The works revealed their reverse, creating what was documented with forensic precision. In one series of photographs, entitled Self-Portrait Behind a Perforated Canvas, she pushed her face, hair, and fingers through the perforations, turning her own body into artistic material.
David Crowley, curator of the retrospective exhibition at Muzeum Susch in eastern Switzerland, notes that Schubert's dual vocation wasn't unusual for Yugoslav artists who rarely had access to a commercial art market. However, the way these two worlds bled into each other was. The scalpels she used to make clean incisions in cadavers became instruments for slicing canvas.
Schubert's experimentation took another turn when her sister, Marina, recalls that "the uncertainty of the period, together with the continuous reports of destruction and loss, placed her in a difficult position between her artistic pursuit and the rapidly changing world around her." Schubert responded by partially veiling the wartime newspaper reports through her interventions, layering her own visual language over the stark realities of the time.
One work from 1991, War Image, depicts a photograph of destruction with black bars obscuring the images beneath. This might seem like obscuring or denying a harrowing reality, but it's also a way of slowing down the viewer, forcing them to lean in and look closely at what might otherwise be consumed as media spectacle.
The exhibition's final rooms chart Schubert's confrontation with a different kind of violence. Diagnosed with colon cancer in 1997, she made Biography – five groups of glass test tubes filled with photographs spanning her childhood, travels, artworks, anatomical drawings from medical manuals, and self-portraits titled Phony Smile.
In Horizons (2000), she invited viewers to step inside circular panoramas of places she loved: Zagreb, the Croatian island of Vir, Paris and Venice among others. These final works feel like a protest against being medicalised – a prolongation of her life and memories beyond the clinical gaze she'd spent decades wielding herself.
Walking through the exhibition's 12 galleries, you encounter what seems like several different artists – radical shifts occurring every few years. Perhaps that's exactly how Schubert wanted it. Even now, decades after her death, she remains elusive.
I'm loving this artist's fearless approach to her craft - who needs traditional boundaries when you can wield a scalpel like a brush? 
It's wild to think about the medical illustrations she did for surgical textbooks and then turned into art. The way she played with the idea of 'art' being created in a clinical space is really thought-provoking... I mean, who says creativity has to be contained within traditional mediums? 
And those glass test tubes filled with photos... it's like she's trying to say 'Hey, I exist beyond just my medical history' 
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i mean dont get me wrong edita schubert was a total genius and all but ugh the amount of work they showed is just crazy like 200 pieces? can't they curate it better? show more of her personal stuff, not just her art u feel? and what's up with all these descriptions they're so lengthy 
like how about a summary or something? i wanna see the art not read a novel about it 
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. i mean, yeah ok, she used scalpsels on canvases, yaaassss, how original... and it's all soooo deep... "slowing down the viewer" whatever that means... sounds like some fancy way of saying "i'm trying too hard to be profound". her work just feels like a bunch of weird experiments with no real conclusion 
i mean she was creating art while also being a medical illustrator which is like 2 completely different worlds colliding in this amazing way 
and the fact that she used scalpels to cut into canvas is just mind-blowing 
i love how her art is all about pushing boundaries and challenging people's perceptions, especially with these wartime works where she's trying to slow down the viewer from consuming the trauma too quickly 
I need more details before I can fully appreciate Schubert's work 
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She went from being a medical illustrator to an avant-garde artist & still managed to make art that's super relevant today! 
I mean, think about it - her anatomical drawings were used in surgical textbooks & she even made artworks with medical scalpel... talk about blending boundaries! 
and yet she wasnt afraid to get her hands dirty (literally) with that scalpel thingy... idk about ppl saying her art is all about confronting violence tho i feel like its more about finding beauty in the imperfections and not letting ppl consume u by media 
What's next? A DNA helix-inspired fashion line? 
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