John Lennon's widow has lived in Switzerland since 1988. Yoko Ono was born in Tokyo in 1933 to a family of well-to-do bankers. She was forced to flee the relentless bombing of the Japanese capital at a very young age and sought refuge with her parents in the countryside. After the war, her family emigrated to New York. Yoko began to write poetry while she completed her studies. She frequented the artistic circles and discovered avant-garde composers such as Arnold Schönberg. Married in 1956, she returned to Japan to exhibit her artistic creations of music, poems and paintings.
She returned to New York in 1964 after her divorce and remarried producer Anthony Cox. Yoko Ono began to earn a reputation in the art world as a member of the artists' group Fluxus and following the publication of her collection of poems, Grapefruit. In 1966, she was invited to the Destruction in Art Symposium in London, where she met John Lennon, the star of the Beatles. The couple then began a series of artistic and musical appearances that sparked indignation and surprise amongst the general public. They were also famous for their militant commitment to world peace, particularly through the hit song Give Peace a Chance.
In 1975, Yoko Onon give birth to Sean Lennon. After John Lennon was assassinated in 1980, Yoko Ono slowed her artistic production and devoted her time to her son. She won a Grammy Award for her album Double Fantasy in 1982. In 1988, Yoko Ono moved to Geneva, Switzerland, to find solace far from the crowds of fans and journalists. In October 2000, she began a new tour entitled YES Yoko Ono, a retrospective of her avant-garde work.