Cuthbert was raised in rural Pennsylvania and became the first woman to have a solo-exhibition at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Institute in 1938. She taught art at the University of Buffalo and the Albright School of Art, was an art columnist,and made covers for Fortune Magazine.

Inner City Industrial Scene was made shortly after Cuthbert settled in Buffalo, New York, with her husband, artist Philip Elliott. It highlights Cuthbert’s practice of painting familiar surroundings and images of daily life. The desolate scene of an empty storefront that looks out on an industrial complex devoid of humanity demonstrates the artist’s combined adaptation of a hard-edged styleassociated with Precisionism and the mysterious elements of Magic Realism.