Ive Šubic often focused on nature in his paintings and prints. He created various landscapes, often dramatic snow-peaked mountains, as well as animals, such as donkeys, horses, tigers, and others. Although not central in the painting Beyond the Village, nature plays an important part in this work too, in the form of the material aftermath of unthinkable aggression.
The scene depicts the desperate circumstances in Slovenia related to World War II. The villagers stand observing their destroyed homes and the burned natural landscape, with nearly everything devastated by fire. Destruction and the burning of fields, orchards and forests were a strategy used by the occupying forces to destroy the Partisan hinterland and evidence of their own crimes. The absence of anything green in the ashen landscape behind the depicted village is thus material proof of the consequences of such violence and part of environmental memory.
The destruction of forests is not only a temporary, acute loss, but also a long-term disruption of the ecological balance and a change in the ecosystem. Such dire circumstances cause suffering to both human and nonhuman stakeholders in the natural environment. In the painting, we see a donkey or a mule among the people in the foreground, a nonhuman agent sharing the experience of war-related hardships and suffering. Along with other portrayals of the wartime and postwar conditions, Šubic’s painting serves not only as documentation, but also positions the relationship between people and nature into a shared field of dearth and potential survival.
