Mooi Indië

Mooi Indië (; lit.'Beautiful Indies') was a painting movement that emerged in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) in the early 20th century. Found predominantly in landscape painting and drawing heavily from Romanticism, the movement emerged in the context of growing interest in the visual arts as well as a lucrative market for Orientalist depictions of the exotic peoples and places of the archipelago. Artists included persons of European heritage, such as Wim Dooijewaard, , and Ernest Dezentjé, as well as indigenous painters such as Abdullah Suriosubroto, Pirngadi, and Wakidi.

Works classified as Mooi Indië emphasize beauty and aesthetics, and often depict landscapes with mountains, rice paddies, palm trees, beaches, and rural people. Perspective and composition draw from the prescriptions of academic art as taught in the Netherlands in the early 20th century. The combination of stereotyped subject matter, application of academic principles, and emphasis on aesthetic beauty in works identified as Mooi Indië was criticized as highly formulaic; the Indonesian artist S. Sudjojono urged his contemporaries to break away and develop their own forms. The term Mooi Indië continues to hold pejorative connotations.