Throughout his career, Kounellis was looking to push painting into new territory, taking inspiration from the likes of Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline, and from the earlier abstractions of Kazimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian. Kounellis’ paintings gradually became sculptural in the sense that found elements would be added to the canvas. Throughout his career, he challenged the pristine and sterile environment that is a gallery with the use of live animals during the late 1960s. By doing so he transformed art into a breathing entity. Untitled 1960, is part of a series of works on paper known as Alfabeti, that Kounellis realised in Rome in the early 1960s. In these works are represented the very basic elements of communication - numbers, arrows, and letters. Kounellis decontextualises the letter, number or symbol through isolation and placing it on a white support, so that he is able to focus the viewer’s attention on the marks.