Gerd Utescher grew up in Germany during the Weimar era and studied drawing, graphics, and sculpture at Berlin’s Academy of Fine Arts. Upon his graduation in 1937, he designed and created interior architectural decorative elements and worked as an illustrator and stage designer. After moving to the United States in 1950, Utescher taught at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Settlement Music School, and the Allen’s Lane Art Center.During the 1960s Utescher received a number of commissions for public sculptural works in Philadelphia; by 1970 he began work on his People in Cities series, which included a group of evocative sculptures cast in bronze that focused on figures in claustrophobic architectural environments. Elevators is one of a number of elevator sculptures in the People in Cities series that Utescher executed while living in Italy with his new wife.