In the book La trinchera realista (The Realist Trench), Josefina Lewin studies the development of the visual arts of the Communist Party of Chile during the anti-communist persecution unleashed by President Gabriel González Videla (1948–1952), a topic that has not been sufficiently explored by local art historiography to date. To this end, the author researches the trajectories of certain visual artists who were established in the spheres of the Communist Party during this period—mainly José Venturelli, Carlos Hermosilla Álvarez, Julio Escámez, and Pedro Lobos—in light of the reflections, debates, and art criticism that circulated on the platforms of this political group. The hypothesis put forward argues that, between 1948 and 1952, members of the Communist Party instituted a more or less cohesive artistic policy, understood not as a programmatically defined doctrine, but as a set of principles or slogans that were consistently ratified through their discourses and art practices. These slogans are identified throughout the text with three demands that the Communist Party imposed on its visual artists: to rehabilitate the relationship between art and life, to produce realistic works, and to denounce injustice without renouncing the historical optimism of socialist realism.

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