Barbara Stauffacher Solomon

Barbara Stauffacher Solomon is a San Francisco-based artist, graphic and landscape designer, and writer. Solomon first worked as a dancer before studying painting and sculpture at the San Francisco Art Institute. After the death of her husband in 1956, Solomon moved to Basel, Switzerland to study graphic design at the Basel Art Institute with Armin Hoffman. She later studied Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley. Best known for her interior supergraphics of the 1960s Sea Ranch and her 1991 Ribbon of Light installation at the Embarcadero Promenade in San Francisco, her iconic style of mixing Swiss modernism and West Coast pop art pioneered the look of the California Cool—an important moment in graphic design history. Now in her 80s and still working on her craft, Solomon has turned her attention to a smaller canvas, creating pieces that tell not just one story, but many, and making a single page dance well beyond its borders.