PASADENA, CA.- The Pasadena Museum of Contemporary Art presents the exhibit California Colors: Hanson Puthuff through January 7. This is the first museum exhibition focusing exclusively on the work of Hanson Puthuff(1875-1972), an American Impressionist who painted primarily in California. Organized by the PMCA, the exhibition will feature a selection of some of his best work in private Southern California collections.

Hanson Duvall Puthuff was born August 21, 1875 at Waverly, Missouri. He trained and studied at the University Art School, Denver and the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts.

Arriving in Los Angeles in 1903, he was employed as a commercial artist and by 1926 was able to support himself as an easel painter. As a plein air painter, Puthuff bathed the Southern California landscape -- his mountains, rollings hills and valleys -- with warm atmospheric effects.

Hanson Puthuff held memberships at the California Art Club, Laguna Beach Art Association, Palette and Chisel Club, Chicago and the Salmagundi Club in New York. He won First Prize at the Laguna Beach Art Association, 1920 and 1921, Gold Medal at the Painters of the West, 1927, the Silver Medal at the Pacific Southwest Exposition, Long Beach, 1928 and the Gold Medal at the Laguna Beach Art Association, 1931. He died in Corona del Mar, California on May 12, 1972.