Mary Plaisted Austin was born in 1919 in Piedmont, California. She studied at Stanford University; Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles; Barnard College (Columbia University), New York; and the Art Institute of Chicago. She spent much of her life traveling and living abroad with her husband, the writer Rick Austin, who, like Mary, was a political activist. The influence of her travels is evident in her work, as was her political activism, her feminist bent, and her passionate interest in nature, animals, humanity, pacifism, and spirituality.

First exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary, Art, San Diego, "20th Century" is a vivid political commentary that the artist painted while standing on a scaffold outside of her studio. The painting orchestrates all her favored themes - hatred for war, the human capacity for cruelty to animals, extreme dependence on technology and ravaging of the natural world - as a grand visual symphony. Angels hover above, and the sky is a soft blue, but this vision of present and future is dark. Heaven doesn't seem accessible to many of those below. (Bob Pincus, "A Canvas, Missing Some Texture: Mary Plaisted Austin's 'Life's Work' Only Hints at the Artist's Complex Style")

Mary Plaisted Austin created an extensive body of work using various media, including oil and acrylic painting, collage, and lithography. While her work reflects the influence of many artists, from the Mexican muralists to the European Expressionists, the unifying vision behind this work consists of her intense love of the natural world and the desire to express the spiritual. "Twentieth Century" represents a synthesis of decades of work. The immense image features five converging entities:
1. DESTRUCTIVE TECHNOLOGY, THE KILLER MACHINE (lower left)
2. WAR; THE CITY ON FIRE, A DYING WORLD (upper center)
3. THE ENGULFING WAVE, EXTINCTION (lower center, right)
4. THE ASCENSION, AIDED BY THE HEAVENLY COMPUTER, WITH ANGELS (upper center, right)
5. CELESTIAL HABITAT, STARS, UV RAYS, SPACESHIPS (upper left)