Marie-Renée Ucciani

Marie-Renée Ucciani (27 March 1883 – 19 February 1963) was a French painter and sculptor. A member of the Société des Artistes Français, she exhibited in its Salon in the 1930s.

Biography
Marie-Renée Ucciani was born in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris on 27 March 1883. Her father was Pierre Ucciani, a painter, jeweler and goldsmith. Her mother, Hortense (née Bégard), was an heiress and the manager of an important jeweler and goldsmith business, "Bégard H. et Cie".

In May 1903, she married Georges Baudy (1880-1960), who took over the business, "Bégard H. et Cie" on 8 February 1911. Their youngest daughter died at the age of two following a fall in the Tuileries Garden, which destabilized the marriage. Ucciani divorced and tried to forget this tragedy by painting and sculpting.

Ucciani was introduced to painting at a very young age by her father. From 1906, she painted in Villers-sur-Mer in the company of Léon Giran-Max, her cousin Élisabeth Fuss-Amoré, and her father, in a style influenced by Post-Impressionism and Fauvism.

From 1913 to 1914, Ucciani was introduced to sculpture by Paolo Troubetzkoy before his departure to the United States. From 1928 to 1939, as a student of Eugène Bénet, she made busts and bas-reliefs, for which Bénet made plaster casts and terracotting. She took her family, her friends, and her dog "Loute" as models. The Bénet couple became friends and stayed at her home, Villa Corsica in Villers-sur-Mer. In 1932, she became a member of the Société des Artistes Français and exhibited in its Salon from that year to 1939.

From 1940 to 1944, she lived in Villers-sur-Mer, in the evacuated zone, in spite of pressure from family and friends. From 1945 to 1963, living in Paris in an artist's studio at 63, boulevard Berthier, she returned to paint every spring on the Normandy coast.

She died on 19 February 1963 in her studio in the 17th arrondissement of Paris, and was buried in the Bégard family chapel in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.