It's not often that an exhibition spans seven decades of work by a single artist. Yet thanks to the longevity of Louise Bourgeois - born in France in 1911 and based in the US since 1938 - Tate Modern's new retrospective matches a timeline of modern art.

It's well organised, limiting each room to key pieces that illuminate rather than overwhelm, and finishes with a 'cabinet of curiosities' - small sculptures and drawings made throughout her career.

The chronology that emerges illustrates changing preoccupations but also repeating motifs. The first few rooms show the evolution of Bourgeois's sculpture from single pieces of wood through wobbly stacks to configurations and more organic shapes in plaster or latex.

It's the life-sized rooms, or 'cells', that strike at the essence of Bourgeois. From her first self-enclosed installation, a dark vision of a terrified family devouring their patriarch at the dinner table (1974's The Destruction Of The Father), to vast spaces created by doors or cages in the 1990s, they are like film sets for a psychic world.

They reach their climax in 1997's Spider - similar to Bourgeois's 1999 Maman (pictured) that was the first Turbine Hall commission, and which now sits on the riverbank outside the gallery during this show. Throughout the exhibition, there is the impression that, like an arachnid, Bourgeois not so much sculpts as secretes her work.

Until Jan 20, Tate Modern, Bankside SE1, daily 10am to 6pm (Fri and Sat to 10pm), £10. Tel: 020 7887 8888. www.tate.org.uk Tube: Southwark