
Barbara Stauffacher Solomon
was born 1928 in San Francisco, California, USA, where she passed aways in 2024
Barbara Stauffacher Solomon was an American artist and graphic designer best known for her large scale interior ‘supergraphics’ and exterior signage at Sea Ranch, a private estate with a utopian vision in Sonoma County, California. After studying dance and painting as a teenager, Solomon moved to Switzerland in the 1950s where she was the first American at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Basel, studying with acclaimed designer Armin Hofmann. The design she encountered there was modernist, and in 1962 she returned to the United States, bringing with her this approach to design and opening her own studio on Montgomery Street, San Francisco. Following that, she became involved with Sea Ranch, where she was responsible for the logo and branding as well as interiors. It was at Sea Ranch that she created ‘supergraphics’. Solomon earned a Master’s degree in Architecture at the University of California at Berkeley in 1981, publishing her thesis, *Green Architecture & The Agrarian Garden. *She then became enamoured with book form, recognising it as a way of connecting across philosophy, semiotics, design, and art, without boundaries. She has published several art books as part of her oeuvre.

WELCOME by Barbara Stauffacher Solomon
in her BSS Font at the ‘entrance’ to St. Moritz
© Engadin St. Moritz Tourismus

Why? Why Not? #2, 2017
Graphite, colored pencil, paper
27.9 x 21.6 cm

Supersign, 2021
“SO”, “ASS”, “CHEVRON”, “STRIPES”, “OK”, “?”, “HEART”
Porcelain enamel on steel
140 × 140 cm
each Ed. 3/7 + 2 AP

A formal/ agrarian landscape #1, 1986
Graphite, colored pencil, vellum
27.9 x 21.6 cm

Balls #2, 2019
Mixed media: Pigment print collage, gouache, ink, graphite, colored pencil, white-out, cellophane tape, rubber cement, paper
27.9 x 21.6 cm

Supercloud 22, 2020
Mixed media: Pigment print collage, gouache, ink, graphite, colored pencil, white-out, cellophane tape, rubber cement, paper
27.9 x 21.6 cm

Waves 1 of ten – Waves 10 of ten, 2012
Graphite and colored
pencil on paper
27.9 x 21.6 cm

The facade of the offices and side entrance at von Bartha, Basel designed by Barbara Stauffacher Solomon with a Supergraphic