Cajori studied at the Colorado Springs (Colorado) Art Center, the Cleveland (Ohio) Art School, before coming to New York in 1946 where he briefly attended Columbia University, and pursued his studies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. In 1955 he was a participant in the establishment of the Tanager Gallery, where his first one-man exhibition was held the following year. Cajori has been termed a "second generation Abstract Expressionist," who renewed concern for formal problems; which for him has focused on the classical female nude.
Among his distinctions have been a grants or awards from the National Endowment for the Arts; the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation; the American Institute of Arts and Letters, the Ford Foundation, and Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. In Academy annual exhibitions he has received Altman Prizes, 1983 and 1987; the Carnegie Prize, 1984; the Fabri Prize, 1985; and the Isidor Prize, 1988.
Cajori has served on the faculties of the American University, Washington, D. C.; Cornell University, Ithaca, New York; the Philadelphia Museum of Art School; and the University of California, Berkeley. In New York he has taught at the Cooper Union, 1956-65, and Queens College, 1965-86; in 1964 he became a founding member of the faculty of the New York Studio School. In 1988 Cajori was elected to a three-year term on the Academy Council. He resides in Watertown, Connecticut.
