Only during the past decade has an audience outside Denmark started to take notice of the great Danish artist Poul Gernes (1925-1996), which led to this ground-breaking retrospective exhibition and its catalog.

Gernes, who believed that the person behind the artwork was irrelevant, rejected easel painting early in his life, feeling that it was more important to combine art with a useful function. He called himself a ''decorator,'' and created more than 150 site-specific interiors and exteriors all over Denmark. Gernes founded the Experimenting Art School, known as the Eks-Skolen, in 1960, and tirelessly promoted the idea of art as a socially conscious, collective enterprise.

This beautiful catalog also includes his 48 x 48-inch ''target paintings,'' their clear and vibrant colors typical of Gernes commitment to the simplest and most immediate expression of art.