Artia

Czechoslovak company, exporter and distributor of Supraphon and Panton releases abroad. (Note: not to be confused with Artia Records, although a connection is obvious.) PZO Artia was originally founded as a stock company for import and export of cultural goods, but transformed into a PZO* in 1953 as the Czechoslovak cultural goods import/export monopolist, later incorporating a publishing house as well. The enterprise became obsolete with the political changes in Czechoslovakia and in all other COMECON countries around 1990, and was liquidated in 1994. Usually credited on releases as “Artia Prague”, with a “flying horse” logo. On many releases from the 1950s and 1960s however, “Artia” remained uncredited – most of them are still easily identifiable by unique catalog number schemes, usually beginning with “SU”. (See also the Supraphon profile for common catalog# schemes.) New releases since the early 1970s were released with the unified Supraphon catalog numbers, usually adding the Artia logo on the sleeve as an identifier. Represses or reissues of pre-1970 releases were usually reusing the old original catalog numbers in various forms. Another identification help of a pre-1970 “uncredited” Artia release is the language: Supraphon releases with credits and notes in Czech only are not Artia releases, as they were obviously not intended for export. On the other hand, releases with credits and notes in English, German, Russian, or multilingual were usually assembled by Artia, even if there is no mention of “Artia” at all. *) PZO = Podnik zahraničního obchodu = literally “Abroad Trade Enterprise”, aka “Unitary Enterprise” in communist legalese English.