It operated as a workshop, where students collaborated as apprentices on commissions Amador secured to finance the school and sporadically held art history lectures.
[1] Lira drew from European influences, teaching students classical, mannerist and modernist sculptural styles, based on the works of Constantin Brâncuși.
[4] Students who graduated during Peñalba's leadership included Alejandro Aróstegui [es], Alejandro Canales, César Caracas, Pérez Carrillo, Noel Flores Castro, Arnoldo Guillén, Genaro Lugo, Silvio Miranda, Carlos Montenegro, Leoncio Saénz [es], Fernando Saravia, Luis Urbina, Julio Vallejos Ugarte, Leonel Vanegas and Pedro Vargas.
Without a permanent home, the school moved often until 1975, when Dávila secured a donated property in the Dambach Neighborhood of Managua from owners who had emigrated from the country.
[1] In 1984, Alejandro Aróstegui founded the David Alfaro Siqueiros National School of Public-Monumental Art (Spanish: Escuela Nacional de Arte Público-Monumental "David Alfaro Siqueiros"), to address the fact that most of the public artworks in the country were being created using acrylic paints, a media which is impermanent in the tropical climate.