In the late 1930s Eisner exhibited as a member of a popular front organization called the American Artists' Congress. After the Soviet invasion of Finland in 1940 she and a small group of like-minded artists quit the Congress to found an avowedly non-political organization called the Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors. In 1937 Eisner and her husband traveled to Mexico to help the Dewey Commission investigate charges leveled against Leon Trotsky by the Soviet government in the Moscow Trials of 1936–1937. Eisner made a painting of commission members interviewing Trotsky in a house on the outskirts of Mexico City owned by Rivera and Frida Kahlo. The painting (shown at left) contains a view of Diego Rivera who is making a sketch of the scene. She also made two portraits of Trotsky. The two of them joked about a time when she scraped off pigment in painting his face. He made an affectionate, albeit macabre joke that she was beheading him. This painting is shown in the photo of Trotsky and Eisner at top right.