Art: Exit a Giant

With the death of Diego Rivera in Mexico City last week at 70, the Western Hemisphere lost its most commanding painter and one of its thorniest personalities. A huge, suave, slow-moving, spherical creature with great sophistication and prodigious energy, he made a practice of overwhelming women—and all opponents but the last. The rich enjoyed him as a comradely collector and bon vivant (he left a million-dollar estate plus a collection of pre-Columbian Indian art worth as much again). Beggars revered him as a man who courteously pressed folding money into their outstretched hands....