Charles Cajori    Feb 14 - Mar 15, 2008

The recent works of Charles Cajori express an authenticity of experience and a powerful aptitude for formal invention. With searching mind and lively brushwork Cajori assembles a world of great beauty and intellectual curiosity. Sensual pleasure coexists with a questioning of optical perception and spatial understanding. Figures shift and slide through interior spaces, mirroring the movement of our eyes as we collect and process information into thoughts and ideas.

From the 1950s to the present Cajori has been enthralled by the rhythms and revelations found in expressionistic painting and improvisational jazz. His early association with artists such as DeKooning and Kline and his first hand exposure to the music of Charlie Parker and Lester Young gave him the foundation of aesthetic inquiry that he continues to practice today. Drawn lines define form and movement, while harmonic chords of color pulse and shimmer throughout the composition. Each new passage of painterly invention supercedes the last, adding to the sense of life and spontaneity in the work, which is the hallmark of Cajori’s vision.

Cajori’s stunning paintings prove that the expressionistic idiom still has much to offer. To this day he can be found in jazz clubs, gleaning information from a new generation of musicians. He draws from the female figure incessantly, always adding to his vast knowledge of the human form. Cajori’s paintings are works of great imagination and improvisation informed by experience. They live in the nexus of sight, sound, intellect, and sensuality. Since the mid-twentieth century Cajori has been a masterful and important presence in American art. This exhibition finds him at the top of his game. Charles Cajori was born in Palo Alto, CA in 1921. He was a co-founder of the Tanager Gallery and has been exhibiting his work continuously since the 1950s. Cajori’s work is represented in public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum, Walker Art Center, the Weatherspoon Art Museum, the Denver Art Museum, and the National Academy of Design. He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, and a Fulbright Grant, among others. Cajori is a faculty member of the New York Studio School and has taught at numerous other schools, including Queens College, Cooper Union, Cornell University, and University of California at Berkeley. His work has been reviewed in publications such as the New York Times, Art in America, Art News, Arts Magazine, The New York Observer, and Art New England. Cajori lives and works in Watertown, CT.