[...] The diptych Ladder (1967) plays on the theme of the tragic vision of human existence. On the left, someone (man or woman?) is climbing a ladder with difficulty; its two bottom rungs sink under the figure’s feet into a liquid substance. On the right, the entire image appears upside down, so that the character is now climbing down and its head sinks in that liquid substance.

The body, in both cases, appears contorted; the lower rungs, on the way up, and the top ones, on the way down, bend under the weight of the feet. The general impression is one of coming and going, an incessant going up and down without any purpose, as if someone were running away from one form of oppression to fall into another – never finding the exit of the labyrinth.

But one should also remember the symbology of the ascent and descent of the soul: the former, an inward movement; the latter, the disappearance of the outside world. Distéfano takes into account that symbology, which religious traditions interpret in terms of an ascent to heaven and a descent to hell, though in Distéfano’s representation there is no difference but continuity: one climbs to climb down, descends in order to ascend, achieving nothing. [...]