Laozi
Sehnal – Malich – Laozi

This is the first volume of the small, illustrated Czech Laozi Edition, which presents a major Czech translation of the Chinese philosopher and poet Laozi's Dao De Jing, or the The Book of the Way (Dao) and Its Power (De).
In it, David Sehnal, the youngest of the translators and one of Oldrich Král's students, presents his independent endeavour to find and express the depth of the thoughts voiced by Master Lao.   The reader will be carried away and inspired not only by the power in Laozi's philosophy transformed into pure poetry, but also by the colourfulness and deep conceptual thought in the accompanying art of Karel Malich. The artist based his work for this publication on the bibliophile edition published in the same year in a print run of 148 copies, of which thirty-three each included a different original pastel signed by Karel Malich. 

This edition of Laozi fulfils the long held dream of the gallerist Zdeněk Sklenář to give Czech readers the opportunity to discover what is the second most often translated book in the world in its various translations by leading individuals in the field – Rudolf Dvořák (1860–1920), Berta Krebsová (1909–1973), Oldřich Král (b: 1930), and David Sehnal (b: 1964) – within the framework of the unique artistic expression of four contemporary artists: Krištof Kintera (b: 1973), Wu Yi (b: 1966), Jan Merta (b: 1952), and Karel Malich (b: 1924).