ADAA Fair 2026

PRESS RELEASE

“She transformed the Helvetica font into a force of architectural art.” — Hans Ulrich Obrist

For the 2026 ADAA Fair, Anthony Meier presents Barbara Stauffacher Solomon: Doing the Forbidden, the artist’s first New York solo presentation in nearly six decades. Best known for inventing Supergraphics at The Sea Ranch in 196​6, Stauffacher Solomon (1928–2024) transformed the relationship between art, architecture, and design. The presentation brings together her language-based drawings and collages with a monumental Supergraphic first exhibited in High Styles: Twentieth-Century American Design at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1985, newly realized across the walls of Anthony Meier’s ADAA booth.

Trained by Armin Hofmann in Basel from 1956–1959, Stauffacher Solomon was among the earliest American artists to introduce Swiss modernism and Helvetica into postwar American visual culture. At The Sea Ranch, she transformed architecture through monumental wall paintings, expanding the possibilities of where art could exist. In 1968, Life magazine introduced her Supergraphics to a national audience. Her work extended into the public realm through numerous projects, including her 1984 signage for the Hunter College subway entrance in New York, commissioned by architect Ulrich Franzen, where typography became an architectural intervention in the everyday urban landscape.

Doing the Forbidden reveals a singular artistic practice moving fluidly between the 8½ × 11-inch page and the built environment. On the wall, geometry and scale transform our perception of space; on the page, words, punctuation, and geometric forms become intimate, philosophical inquiries into gender, power, intelligence, and her own place in the world.

In one drawing, a pink question mark enclosed in quotation marks asks us to question accepted truths and the authority we assign to them. Through color, form, scale, and negative space, Stauffacher Solomon interrupts our automatic recognition of familiar symbols, asking us to look again and think for ourselves. She urges us to “see, not read,” and to “make the invisible visible.”

Her monumental Supergraphic, Strips of Stripes (2023), is currently on view at SFMOMA. In 2027, her work will be featured in a solo exhibition at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Made in San Francisco at the de Young Museum, and a new permanent public art commission for the San Francisco Arts Commission.

ADAA Fair
Booth D2
12 - 16 November 2026

Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10065

Preview Gala, Thursday, Nov 12
VIP Preview, Friday, Nov 13, 10:00am–12:00pm
Friday, Nov 13, 12:00–7:00pm
Saturday, Nov 14, 11:00am–7:00pm
Sunday, Nov 15, 11:00am–6:00pm
Monday, Nov 16, 11:00am–5:00pm