80 and still modern

Gerhard Richter, arguably Germany's most renowned visual artist, celebrates his 80th birthday on Thursday with a special exhibition planned in his honor at Berlin's New National Gallery.

Around 150 works from Richter's nearly six-decade career go on display in Berlin starting Sunday. "Gerhard Richter Panorama" comes to the German capital after a run at the Tate Modern in London, and travels to the Centre Pompidou in Paris in the summer.

The collection includes some of his best-known images like "Ema (Nude descending a staircase)" from 1966, as well as works rarely seen in public, like his first "Color Chart" from the same year.

Born in 1932 in Dresden, Richter defected from communist East Germany to the West in 1961, just a few months before the construction of the Berlin Wall. He settled in the western city of Dusseldorf and later moved to Cologne, where he now lives.

The culture ministers of the states of Berlin and North Rhine-Westphalia both congratulated him on his contribution to the modern art canon.

"Through his personal and artistic presence, our state has been enriched in many ways," North Rhine-Westphalia Culture Minister Ute Schäfer said in a statement.

In 2007 a large stained glass window by Richter was unveiled in the Cologne Cathedral, one of Germany's most visited tourist attractions.

Last year his iconic 1982 painting "Two Candles" fetched more than $12.9 million (9.7 million euro) at a New York City auction, a price he called "impossible to understand" and "just as absurd as the banking crisis."

acb/jw (Reuters, dpa, epd)