John Deere tractors, combines and lawnmowers are some of the most familiar items across Iowa’s landscape. But an art display at the Des Moines Art Center takes the familiar green and yellow machinery to a different, far more abstract, level.

The show, open through mid-April, is a collection of seven abstract paintings of John Deere machinery created nearly seven decades ago by renowned artist Hedda Sterne.

She completed the paintings in the early 1960s after visiting ...