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December 19, 2025
‘I had to plunge the knife into the canvas’: Edita Schubert wielded her scalpel like other artists wield a brush
In her day job, the ‘first lady of Croatian avant garde’ sliced up cadavers at Zagreb’s anatomical institute. In her studio, she used the same medical instruments to make art that surprises to this day
TL;DR
- Edita Schubert worked as a medical illustrator at the Institute of Anatomy in Zagreb for over 30 years.
- She used medical instruments like scalpels and tape in her art studio.
- Her early art moved from traditional painting to canvases deliberately cut with scalpels, some documented as performances.
- Later works included geometric paintings derived from human faces and anatomical illustrations, and installations with organic materials.
- Her collages in the 1990s responded to the Yugoslav Wars by partially obscuring wartime newspaper reports.
- Her final works, created while battling cancer, were autobiographical installations using test tubes and panoramas of places she loved.
- Schubert's work remained largely unknown outside Yugoslavia until a major retrospective at Muzeum Susch.
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