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After joining the National School of Painting (in Casco Viejo, the old colonial part of Panama City) in 1940 as assistant to the director Humberto Ivaldi, another of his mentors, Juan Manuel was in charge of he school from 1948-1967 and named director ad honorem of the school.
After Roberto Lewis' death in 1949, Juan Manuel began the reorganization of the National School of Painting.
He was also professor of drawing and painting at the University of Panama in Panama City from 1949 until his retirement in 1978.
After Roberto Lewis died, Juan Manuel was commissioned to continue Lewis' work of painting the official portraits of several of Panama's presidents (the first one done in 1948 of Dr. Daniel Chanis and the last one painted in 1987 of Max Del Valle) which are permanently displayed in the Presidential Gallery of the Salon Amarillo (Yellow Room) of the Presidential Palace in the colonial part of Panama City.
In 1970, he was commissioned by the government to retouch the paintings by Roberto Lewis on the ceiling and in the foyer of the historic National Theater in the colonial part of Panama City, an arduous process particularly on the ceiling.
In 1995, Juan Manuel was contracted by then Foreign Minister Gabriel Lewis Galindo to paint 12 large paintings depicting significant events of Panama's history. Unfortunately, Lewis Galindo died before the project was initiated.
Cedeño's style
Juan Manuel worked in oil, tempora, charcoal, water color. He did not stay within the strict boundaries of classical art, but dared to experiment with new forms of expression bordering at times on cubism.
The gamut of his works in included:
- Panamanian rustic country scenes (the vernacular as is often called in Panama) -- especially rustic scenes of Los Santos Province on the Azuero Peninsula (southwest of Panama City), which exhibited his pride in his birthplace which he greatly cherished and was quite emotional about and passed it on to others through his paintings.
- Panamanian scenes, customs, national costumes such as the polleras and diablicos) and religious scenes.
- Aspects of history, particularly Panama in the first part of the 20th Century.
Although he painted many landscape and historical scenes, he stood out as being one of the principal portrait painters after Roberto Lewis and, like many of those by his mentor, many of his portraits hang in the Presidential Palace and other government office buildings. His portraits showed hints of the portraits by the Spanish portrait painters Velasquez (Diego Rodriguez de Iva y Velasquez) and Francisco de Goya y Lucientes.