Tracey Emin - "85 is Going to Be the Best Year Yet": Early original woodcut with handwritten signed Christmas greeting, 1984

Tracey Emin - "85 is Going to Be the Best Year Yet": Early original woodcut with handwritten signed Christmas greeting, 1984

Woodcut on wove card paper

This work is absolutely historic and a must have for true fans and devoted collectors of Tracey Emin’s work. Not too many of these early pieces from her student days like the present work can be found on the market. 
This scarce and early - 1984 - hand made woodcut was made by Tracey Emin while she was studying printmaking at Maidstone College of Art in Kent, UK and  gifted to a friend and classmate as a Christmas card. On the back is a handwritten and hand signed letter - written in Tracey’s famously atrocious spelling and grammar. She writes,

Dear Bumble,

May you feel enlightened by precotious 13 year old nimfs, wisky and wild cat’s,

For remember Christmas is a time for giving,

All my love,  Traci x 

p.s. As I said to Roderick 85 is going to be the worse (crossed out) best year yet. 

(She adds her two telephone numbers below) 

This work has been elegantly floated and framed in a museum quality wood frame under double sided UV plexiglass to reveal both the complete woodcut as well as the handwritten, hand signed personal Christmas greeting inside. 
Measurements:
Framed:
13.5 inches (vertical) by 18.25 inches (horizontal) by 2 inches
Woodcut:
6.25 inches (vertical) by 11 inches (horizontal) 

Tracey Emin studied printmaking at Maidstone College of Art in the UK from 1983-6 under Joan Williams. Emin went on to study painting at the Royal College of Art in London. This work was gifted to a fellow artist who studied with her at both schools. 
Emin’s early woodcuts, created during her time at Maidstone, demonstrate a strong influence from the German and Austrian Expressionists. The prints often depict intertwined couples and contorted figures, recalling the emotional force of artists such as Oskar Kokoschka, Käthe Kollwitz and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. These scenes capture both tenderness and discomfort, offering insight into relationships, identity and vulnerability.
The present work looks. eerily similar to a 1913 woodcut "Two Men at a Table” by Erich Heckel depicting two men who appear to be Heckel and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, which has been in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art since 1924 - that surely Emin would have been familiar with in her student days. 

Although best known for installations such as Everyone I Have Ever Slept With and My Bed, printmaking has remained a vital part of Emin’s practice. It is a medium that allows for immediacy and intimacy, lending itself naturally to the confessional nature of her work. Her print output spans woodcuts, monoprints, etchings and screenprints, each exploring the emotional and psychological terrain that defines her visual language.

These works were gifted to a fellow artist and close friend, who studied with Emin at Maidstone College of Art and the Royal College of Art.