The conflict between the different systems of artistic instruction and their participants dates from the early twentieth century. Initially, the disagreement between teachers and students regarding the educational curriculum at the academy reached its peak in 1913 with the appointment of Alfredo Ramos Martínez (director) and the establishment of the first Open-Air School of Painting, whose original concept came from the painter himself. After a succession of several conservatively inclined directors at the Academia de San Carlos during the armed conflict of 1910-1917, the educational conflict is dealt with again toward the beginning of the 1920s and ends up with the appointment of Ramos Martínez. This director revives his projects and inaugurates the Open-Air School in the Chimalistac neighborhood, south of Mexico City. By 1925, with governmental support, three new schools are inaugurated, although in this instance the schools acquire new overtones. Not only are students accepted from the Academy, but the field of action has been expanded by accepting, in the beginning, children, native students, and women. In its second stage, laborers and their children are also accepted. Between 1925 and 1927 the reviews favored the results at these schools. However, by 1928 the artistic value of the work done at these schools began to be questioned. As a consequence, the artistic milieu ended up divided among those who pushed for the creation of an academic and conservative art, and those who identified with the production of a free and popular art. The group ¡30-30¡ is formed to defend free education and Marti Casanovas—the Catalan writer linked to the Cuban avant-garde and the magazine revista de avance at the end of the ’20s—becomes one of its main ideologues to defend free education.