Cecere studied at the National Academy and at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design in New York and worked for the marble carving firm of the Piccirilli brothers. He was a fellow at the American Academy in Rome from 1920 to 1923. The following year he won the Helen Foster Barnett Prize at the Academy for his idealized bust of Persephone, a work which epitomized his classicizing, decorative style. In portraiture, he executed public works such as the John Frank Stevens Monument, 1925, in Summit, Montana, the Abraham Lincoln Monument, 1933, for Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and the Rural Free Delivery Mail Carrier, 1935-36, for the United States Post Office Department building in Washington, D. C. He also developed a talent for the carving of reliefs and garden figures. In later years, Cecere's art became more abstract and he practiced the method of direct carving.
Cecere began teaching at the Cooper Union Institute in 1924. He served as director of the department of sculpture at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design, New York, taught at Mary Washington College of the University of Virginia in Fredericksburg, and at Washington University, St. Louis. From 1966 to 1979 he taught at the Academy's school. He was a regular exhibitor at the Academy for many years beginning in 1917, and took an active part in its affairs. He was treasurer of the Academy from 1969 to 1971, and assistant treasurer from 1971 to 1974. He bequeathed to the Academy a fund for the establishment of the Gaetano Cecere Memorial Prize for Sculpture to be awarded in the annual exhibitions.
