Color is a wavelength of light. When we see red, it is because a surface absorbs other wavelengths and reflects only the red wavelength back to our eye. Artists in the late nineteenth century, particularly the neoimpressionists, felt that color could be used to create light.

The subtractive, or pigment, primaries are red, blue, and yellow (or more properly magenta, cyan, and yellow). Together they form black (or near black). Combined in pairs they form the set of additive or light primaries.

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