Who signed Barbie's illustrations for the Panini 76 Album ?

Following a reader's recent question, I decided to look a bit further into who signed the illustrations in my Barbie Panini album 1976...

We know for certain that the Panini album Barbie Parade published in 1978 was the work of the italian illustrator Angelo Bioletto (1906-1987) - You can see some of the Barbie Panini albums that have been published here

So did he also sign the 1976 album ? I wouldn't say so...

Here is more of his work on Barbie :

Illustrations are from this very interesting blog on Children in Art History

So not exactly the same style as in the 76 Panini... What do you think ?

What's more confusing is if you have a close look at Barbie through the pages of the Panini 76 album, one notices that she never look quite like the same girl... Here she is in order of appearance, Barbie in 28 close-ups...

I can number at least 7 different ways of drawing Barbie here... And you ?

Sometimes her eyes are too big (nº8), sometimes they are too small (nº1) and sometimes they are just right (to quote Goldilocks)... Her softest features perfectly balance are in the ballerina page (nº22) but would you say it is the same girl as nº 6 ?... Surely not !

So I am wondering, if there were just one or SEVERAL illustrators working on this album ?

Furthermore, there is a series of books published around the same year (1976 & 1977) than my 76 Panini album... And interestingly they look as if they were the work of one person...

The books are a Mattel franchise published in many European countries by different publishers but credited to Dolly & Gloria (as authors ?)... And for the illustration one can notice on the front cover this hand signature (look down on the left of the cover, vertically ) :

One can read V. or J. Gonzalez... And I can't find anything else about him/her at present... Did she/he sign the cover only of these books or all the illustrations inside too ?...

Furthermore, this illustrator could be the same as the one of the Panini 1976 album...

Let's look at a sample :

Here is the Panini 76 album :

Remember, you can see the complete Panini album on my Flickr stream here and check my post on Panini Barbie 1976 earlier on my blog too...

And here is an inside page of Barbie at the Beach published the same year (1976) :

Convinced ? Not convinced ?

The good news is that you can see the complete book (and two others) on Stengo's blog (Imago Recensio) here (in Italian)

And if you are interested in the publishing company Panini itself, there is also on Stengo's blog a fantastic post on the firm with a complete advertisement catalogue dated 1976 showing all the process to make the stickers album and to release them into the world at the time...

See for yourself here

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