The Internet firms also reach into Cuba for art. Transforming oil paint on canvas, he creates paintings of children and couples in love. While he sells some art in Cuban galleries, he says Novica has opened the doors to the world for him, helping him sell online half of the 15 paintings he creates each a month. Anywhere there is one of my paintings, there's a little of me. I'm selling a bit of my feelings.
Galleries are alarmed at the prospects of extinction.
Magda Pineiro, co-owner of Miami's Art Gallery, said it is hard for galleries to compete with websites. Hernandez used to make Mexican pewter jewelry and sell it to tourists in a town near her village of corn, rice and bean fields. To survive, she formed a cooperative with seven other women. With online access to large retail stores and worldwide markets through Viatru, she said she has been able to quintuple the cooperative's sales in the past four years. Their salaries have jumped from 400 pesos a week four years ago to 2,000 pesos a week now, and their children are able to go to school.