The contrast of complementary colors as a resource in painting

Abstract

This paper presents some conclusions inferred from the work in progress developed with design students about complementary colours in historic paintings. They study the use of colour from its plastic point of view, separating from those symbolic, technological or fashion implications from which it could be polluted, and attending to color as an ingredient of the visual language, which is able to arrange, organize and give interest and coherence to the final image and the way in which it is perceived. We pay attention to the grammar of colour, not so much to its semantic content, to the evolution and conformation of this rule of syntax which has being inherited by generations of artists and which is a part of our visual culture.