Barbara Stauffacher Solomon was a sensation of midcentury Modern graphic design at a time when few women broke through the male-dominated sphere. Her accomplishments were many. Born in San Francisco and educated in Basel, she introduced Swiss Modernism, including the Helvetica typeface, to the U.S.

She invented supergraphics: monumental, bold, and bright wall paintings that synthesized art with architecture. Solomon pioneered this style at the Sea Ranch, an architecturally daring utopian community 100 miles north of San Francisco, in 1964. Her work was heralded in the pages of Life magazine, and she was toasted at SFMOMA, where in 2019, she debuted a major, large-scale commission.

“She really pushed her work forward in a moment when a lot of women weren’t getting a lot of recognition,” said Daelyn Farnham, Director of Barbara Stauffacher Solomon Estate.

Installation view of “Barbara Stauffacher Solomon: Garden = Grid = City” at Anthony Meier in San Francisco, 2026.

Still, the designer and artist who passed away in 2024 at the age of 95, remains largely unknown outside of design circles and the West Coast art world, where she was heralded late in life. Many aspects of her career, stretching over eight decades, remain almost entirely unexplored by art historians, from her work in landscape architecture to her practice of drawing and painting.

Now at Anthony Meier in San Francisco, a bigger portrait of the artist comes into view in “Barbara Stauffacher Solomon: Garden = Grid = City” (through February 27, 2026). The show presents rarely exhibited works on paper and paintings, as well as a supergraphic, and centers on her garden-inspired drawings from the 1980s. These works present an artistic investigation of city grids, gardens, and green rectangles, in direct relation to the artist’s lifelong ideals around the common good. Anthony Meier co-represents the estate of Barbara Stauffacher Solomon with von Bartha in Basel, Switzerland, and this marks the first exhibition of her works.

“She was the kind of person who really reinvented herself throughout her life and followed her artistic passions,” said Farnham, “The exhibition is a chance to dig into other aspects of her work.”

A Daring Spirit 

Barbara Stauffacher Solomon, a San Francisco native, would define a graphic sensibility that would combine Swiss Modernism with California cool. In 1956, following the death of her first husband, Solomon headed to Basel, studying under the master of the Swiss Style with Armin Hoffman. “Hoffman told her to learn the rules, and if you’re brilliant, you can break them,” said Farnham, “If you’re not, at least, you’ll be competent. She really internalized subverting people’s expectations.”

Returning to California in the early 1960s, she brought with her the clean and modern Helvetica typeface, introducing it to new audiences in her work. The sans-serif font was a refreshing jolt to designers and viewers, still accustomed to the traditional typefaces of Times New Roman and Baskerville.

Solomon became an overnight sensation in the design world, however, with the opening of the Sea Ranch, on the coast of Northern California, in 1964. Sea Ranch was the vision of developer and architect Al Boeke, who sought to transform the grounds of a former sheep ranch into an environmentally oriented community with modern architectural homes and common spaces. The project brought together leading minds, including landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, who created the masterplan for the development, and prominent architects Joseph Esherick and the firm of MLTW were brought on board.

Installation view of “Barbara Stauffacher Solomon: Garden = Grid = City” at Anthony Meier in San Francisco, 2026.

Solomon, then in her mid-30s, had been hired as a graphic designer for promotional materials. She designed the Sea Ranch logo: two abstracted ram horns, wrapped around a nautilus shell, hinting at the property’s former use as a coastal sheep ranch.

But her quick thinking ultimately defined the project in a much larger way. Nearing completion of construction, money had run out. With walls left in plywood, the architects turned over bare interiors of the facilities to Solomon and asked her to transform the spaces into something “happy.” Solomon did much more than that.

Solomon walked the grounds and tried to orient herself. “She just couldn’t make sense of how the space really functioned,” said Farnham. Solomon enlisted two local house painters, and they set to work for three days.

What was unveiled was something totally new: The interiors and exteriors of Sea Ranch were emblazoned with bold letters, diagonals, arrows, and circles in bright primary colors. “They created these large graphics on the walls that are very kind of hard-edged and Swiss in their formal qualities, but they also animate the space, and they also give you a sense of how you’re meant to use it.”

When Life magazine featured the Sea Ranch in its pages in 1966, her supergraphics were what starred front and center.  These supergraphics expanded the possibility of how design, architecture, and even wayfinding could interact—and the exhibition features a monumental supergraphic installed in the gallery library.

Barbara Stauffacher Solomon, The Sea Ranch Logo and Supergraphic (1965). Courtesy of the Barbara Stauffacher Solomon Estate, Anthony Meier, and von Bartha.

This moment of stardom would launch the next chapter of Solomon’s career. She opened her own studio, and designed SFMOMA’s monthly program guides from 1962 to 1972. Her works were included in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum, the Venice Biennale, and SFMOMA, among others.

“She had this very early formative period studying Swiss graphic design with Armin Hoffman, and she had a very successful career as a graphic designer, but she always kind of thought of that work as paid work for a client,” said Farnham. “She was very clear that she became a graphic designer in order to make money to support herself and her family, as a single mother.”

Solomon had started her life as an artist and dancer and would ultimately find her way back to that world.

Born Barbara Ethel Levé in San Francisco in 1928, she had danced as a child, ultimately earning a scholarship to study ballet while still in high school. Later, she worked as a dancer in nightclubs. She also studied painting and sculpture with David Park at the San Francisco Art Institute, and later with William Gaw at Mills College, and Hans Hofmann at the Art Students League in New York.

Barbara Stauffacher Solomon, Supergraphics at Moonraker Recreational Center, The Sea Ranch (1965). Courtesy of the Barbara Stauffacher Solomon Estate, Anthony Meier, and von Bartha.

At 17, she had met the avant-garde filmmaker Frank Stauffacher at SFMOMA, and the couple married in 1948. Through Stauffacher, she met leading art world figures including Marcel Duchamp, Hans Richter, Man Ray, Igor Stravinsky, Robert Duncan, and Jean Varda. The couple had one daughter, Chloe. Following her husband’s untimely death in 1955, Solomon had reinvented herself in Basel. Back in California, she would remarry to Daniel Solomon, an architect and academic, in 1969 and have a second daughter, Nellie King Solomon (her marriage to Solomon would later end in divorce).

Barbara Stauffacher Solomon. Courtesy of the Barbara Stauffacher Solomon Estate, Anthony Meier, and von Bartha.

But she never gave up experimenting, even after the success of the Sea Ranch. In her 40s, she returned to school at UC Berkeley, earning a degree in landscape architecture and studying philosophy, an experience that would guide her on the next chapter of her creative journey.

“When I think of my friend Barbara Stauffacher Solomon (1928–2024), or Bobbie as I came to know her, I think first of her unwavering belief in art as an open invitation to see and make sense of the world anew,” wrote Hans Ulrich Obrist in the opening lines of a catalogue accompanying the exhibition.

The Garden of Creative Freedom  

Gardens and the landscaped environment serve as a throughline in Solomon’s decades-long and varied career.

In 1988, she published Green Architecture and the Agrarian Garden, based on her master’s thesis. The book, published by Rizzoli, explores how gardens and structures have informed one another over the centuries.

The exhibition at Anthony Meier centers on a series of these Green Architecture drawings from the 1980s. In these works, the green square emerges as her utopian symbol, an egalitarian Eden.

“You can see a lot of her Swiss training in the way that she approaches her understanding of landscape and of space. The grid is kind of ever-present in her thinking,” said Farham, “But she’s also thinking about landscape in a more expanded form and bigger questions rooted in the study of philosophy.”

Barbara Stauffacher Solomon, Cut a rectangle out of the forest and it’s yours (1980s).  Courtesy of the Barbara Stauffacher Solomon Estate, Anthony Meier, and von Bartha.

One drawing features a bright green rectangle and the words, “Cut a rectangle out of the forest and it’s yours.”

“In the work is this idea that you could claim a space of your own through cultivation—that was something she looked at a lot in early garden design,” said Farnham.

Solomon’s love for the city of San Francisco also shines through in these drawings. She was a third-generation San Franciscan, and the city, with its famously hilly topography, had a grid imposed on it. Many of the drawings are imaginary spaces that mix aspects of the city with the architecture and topographies farflung gardens she had visited.

Barbara Stauffacher Solomon, Alcatraz from Crissy Field (1993). Courtesy of the Barbara Stauffacher Solomon Estate, Anthony Meier, and von Bartha.

“San Francisco pops up a lot in the work, both in the grid of the streets, and references to specific locations. She could see Alcatraz from her window in her home in North Beach. Crissy Field and other locations in San Francisco figure prominently as well,” said Farnham, “But there are utopian architectural follies in these works where she’s playing with different ideas of space. She’s always blending these different interests and pursuits within her work.”

Across her career, Solomon embraced both rigor and rebellion. “She works on systems levels, always trying to map and understand the world around her,” said Farnham, “But she also had this playful way of pushing things together and conflating different ideas and opening up the way you can see space.”

Solomon’s visions are delightfully layered and ever-shifting, a complexity of character that made her hard to classify in retrospect, and may in part account for her obscurity. That seems to be changing, slowly, now. Farnham put it simply: “ Barbara Stauffacher Solomon was not a woman who was afraid to pursue her passions.”