Barbara Stauffacher Solomon: California Cool, Swiss Precision

Catalog design for Anthony Meier
Conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist

from the introduction to Hans Ulrich Obrist’s conversation:
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. In our many conversations—one of which is published for the first time below—she returned again and again to the philosophy that art is for everyone, and should not be limited to the confines of a museum. Her Supergraphics, those monumental, wall-spanning signs, merge the disciplined clarity of Swiss modernism with the sun-drenched expansiveness of California, forming a language that operates simultaneously as painting, architecture, and public gesture. Bobbie’s path—from young single mother in the Bay Area, to Basel, where she studied graphic design with Armin Hofmann, and back to the West Coast, where she transformed the Helvetica font into a force of architectural art—unfolds like the plot of a film. And still, her work remains profoundly grounded: bold, generous, and insistently present in everyday life.

24 pages
8.5 x 11 inches