During this time, he also worked as a commercial artist, creating many posters in Art Nouveau style and billboards for the Moderne Galerie München.

[1] There, he gave lectures on composition and took on several students, including the landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx.

During his stay, his colors took on a more tropical flavor and the (for him) exotic plant life became a favorite subject.

A selection of his South American works was the focus of an exhibition in Munich in 1935, which has been fiercely attacked by the Nazi propagandist newspaper Der Stürmer due to the exotic nature of the depicted issues.

[citation needed] An opponent of National Socialism, Putz' art was labelled "degenerate".

[2] Beginning in 1936, he was repeatedly interrogated by the Gestapo and was forced to flee back to his native region, the South Tyrol.

His watercolor Das Burggespenst (60 × 46 cm) was seized with the collection of the Jewish art dealer Walter Westfeld and sold at auction by Kunsthaus Lempertz in 1939, after which its fate is unknown.