From 1905 until his retirement in 1931, Alojzij Repič was a professor of sculpting, carving and figural sculpture at the Ljubljana School of Arts and Crafts. He taught sculpting from nature, figural and ornamental sculpture, techniques of working with various materials, and sculptural anatomy. Repič believed that the most important skills in sculpture were craftsmanship and careful observation of nature, which he diligently passed on to his students.

His oeuvre includes many realist busts of famous figures from Slovenian cultural life. In 1908, three years after taking up professorship at the sculpture department, Repič made a posthumous bust of the painter Jurij Šubic. The frontal portrait of the bearded man is characterised by the subjects’ confident and determined demeanour and his sharp gaze of a painter. The bust is typical of the academic realist style which the sculptor followed until the end of his artistic career.