How did Piet Mondrian use primary colours in Windmill in Sunlight?

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Piet Mondrian Mondrian, photograph by Arnold Newman, 1942.

In his 1908 painting Windmill in Sunlight, Piet Mondrian utilized primary colours—yellow, red, and blue—to evoke the effect of strong, radiant sunshine.1

During this period, Mondrian was influenced by the Dutch Luminist movement, an offshoot of Neo-Impressionism. Like the Neo-Impressionists, the Luminists rendered light by applying paint in a series of dots or short lines of primary colours. By concentrating on this technique and limiting his palette to these primary hues, Mondrian demonstrated his mastery in capturing the intensity of light, marking a significant phase in his artistic development before he moved toward the nonrepresentational style of Neoplasticism.1