TitleShifting Down
Artist
Charles Cajori
(1921 - 2013)
Daten.d.
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsUnframed: 65 3/4 × 48 in.
Framed: 68 1/2 × 51 × 3 1/4 in.
SubmissionNA diploma presentation, October 7, 1987
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number1987.34
Label TextWhile Charles Cajori has long been associated with the second generation of Abstract Expressionist painters, the figure has always been central in his work. Born in Colorado, Cajori studied at the Colorado Springs Art Center and the Cleveland Art School, before coming to New York in 1946 where he briefly attended Columbia University. In 1955, along with Lois Dodd, William King, Angelo Ippolito, and Fred Mitchell as a founding member of the Tanager Gallery, one of New York's earliest cooperative galleries. He had his first solo exhibition there in 1956. In the early 1960s Cajori was instrumental in the formation of the New York Studio School."Shifting Down" is an excellent example of the artist's work. Two figures are central in the composition and rendered with Cajori's characteristic agitated broken line interspersed with broad areas of relatively unmodulated color. Cajori's figures seem to reside in a purgatory between abstraction and representation. The artist has stated: "The demands that the figure makes and the demands the painting makes are often embattled. Their resolution produces a structure. Structure is the painting's purpose."
