California Art Club

The California Art Club (CAC) is one of the oldest and most active arts organizations in California. Founded in December 1909, it celebrated its centennial in 2009 and into the spring of 2010. The California Art Club originally evolved out of The Painters Club of Los Angeles, a short-lived group that lasted from 1906-09. The new organization was more inclusive, as it accepted women, sculptors and out of state artists. Most of the major early California painters belonged to the CAC, including Franz Bischoff (1864–1929), Carl Oscar Borg (1879-1947), Edgar Payne (1883–1947), Julia Bracken Wendt (1868-1942), and William Wendt (1865–1946). As the members of the first generation of California Plein-Air Painters aged and died, the membership was filled by younger professional painters, including Millard Sheets (1907-1989),Mabel Alvarez (1891-1985),Emil Kosa, Jr. (1903-1968), and watercolorist Rex Brandt (1914-2000), along with amateur painters and commercial artists. Other notable members include Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965),Dean Cornwell (1892-1960),Nicolai Fechin (1881-1955),Sam Hyde Harris (1889-1977),Alfredo Ramos Martinez (1872-1946), and Richard Neutra (1892-1970).

Today its membership consists of representational artists and sculptors, but it is broadly inclusive and includes many women painters as well as painters and sculptors who emigrated to the United States from Europe and Asia. The CAC hosts an annual Gold Medal Exhibition (currently at Autry Museum of the American West) each year along with a number of other smaller public and special museum exhibitions. Headquartered in one of the large bungalows that was part of the historic Vista del Arroyo Hotel in Pasadena, the California Art Club has a number of chapters throughout California.

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