The Comisión Nacional de Pintura Mural [National Commission for Mural Painting], which consisted of Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, was founded in late August 1947. The Commission’s goal was to stimulate and regulate the production of murals in Mexico, and to choose the painters and propose the subject matter. The whole idea sparked a range of reactions among painters who expressed their disagreement in a series of interviews with Antonio Rodríguez. Fernando Leal was totally against the idea because he believed that no one could be an arbiter of art, least of all those who “call themselves by the almost theological name of the Big Three.” In his opinion, these three had shown a lack of friendship and had adopted a selfish attitude; they had also betrayed the modern movement begun by José Vasconcelos who distributed the mural walls equally.

On September 1, 1947, the Diario Oficial published an item announcing the creation of the Comisión Nacional de Pintura Mural. That same day a government decree charged the Secretaría de Bienes Nacionales e Inspección Administrativa [Ministry of National Assets and Administrative Inspection]—where the architect Carlos Lazo (1914–1955) was the senior officer—with taking care of murals in public buildings, and approved the creation of the Comisión de Pintura Mural. This decree stirred up a great deal of anger and bad feelings in artistic circles. The art critic Antonio Rodríguez, a faithful defender of painting with a social and political conscience, interviewed a number of the unhappy painters and published the results in the government journal El Nacional. Fernando Leal (1896–1964) believed that he had the moral authority to confront the “Big Three” (Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros). He had been among those who painted the first murals in the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria in San Ildefonso Street. Leal supported the first part of the decree because it guaranteed the care of the murals. He did not support the second part that approved the creation of a commission, which, in his opinion, would have oppressive powers, such as unilaterally choosing the painters that the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes [INBA, National Institute of Fine Arts] was required to hire. Leal thought it was unfair that just a few people were entitled to set the direction for mural painting as a whole; he believed that an exclusivity of this kind would interfere with mural painting’s development rather than contributing to it, and would transform it into a sort of aesthetic and political monopoly. Leal also thought that the self-styled Big Three had shown very little intellectual and artistic respect, and that they had no right at all to decide on the future direction of Mexican painting. The periodical El Nacional was started in 1929 as the journal of the official party Partido Nacional Revolucionario (PNR) [Revolutionary National Party] under the name El Nacional Revolucionario. In its early days it spoke for the socialist ideology and culture of the moment. Its first director was Basilio Badillo. In 1936, the journal entered its second life as El Nacional, which is still being published. In 1947, its director was Fernando Benítez, who had been there as a reporter and editorialist since 1936.