Virginia Cuthbert (1908-2001)
Slum Clearance on Ruch’s Hill, Pittsburgh, 1937
Born in West Newton, Virginia Cuthbert pursued a broad art training in America and abroad and as a result had a range of styles and subjects. As a child she had studied at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, returning to the University of Pittsburgh in 1932, and a year later had her first solo show in the city. She continued to exhibit widely in Pittsburgh and in 1934 won a prize for the best painting by a woman from the Carnegie Institute, a reminder of the many challenges faced by women artists, often slighted by separate “women’s awards.” For more than a decade she lived in Pittsburgh, and her connection to the city deepened with her marriage to another artist from the city, Phillip Elliot (they would move to Buffalo in 1941.)
The Depression hit major American industrial cities hard, and Pittsburgh was no exception. Cuthbert’s expressive Slum Clearance on Ruch’s Hill, Pittsburgh (1937) responds to the dramatic social changes that took place during the thirties. Her scene, which was shown at the Carnegie International, portrays a group of African American women and children watching their homes in a blighted neighborhood being demolished by workmen, nearly all of whom are white. The scene is bleak, and it is not clear if the urban renewal it represents includes finding new homes for those who have been displaced. Her subdued colors convey the somber nature of her subject.
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