I love this idea, @felix.herrmann! Shipping paintings out of Italy - particularly to the US is extremely prohibitive - not just with costs which have sky-rocketed recently, but with Italian beurocracy which asks artists to travel to the city (!!) to get official certification from the fine art ministry, to prove the painting is one's own (i.e. not stolen). The post office will no longer ship art without this certification, and it's risky to send it whilst effectively fibbing about the contents of the package, as it could always get opened randomly and confiscated. This concerns me hugely as an artist selling internationally.

I'd love to know more about this idea, as friends in the community that I live in often travel back to the US, and have offered to carry paintings over there for me, and to post them there. I'm not sure that there'd be a way to avoid the same customs/border issues, if the painting were being carried by hand onto a plane... But would love to hear a plan like this grow!