Artist and educator Perry Davis was a professor at Carnegie Institute of Technology during the early 20th century. He was Andy Warhol's mentor and lived an openly gay life. Rehearsal was painted while Warhol was a sophomore or junior and exhibited in the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh, Twenty-seventh Annual Exhibition, Pennsylvania, 1942. The 1948 AAP exhibit was Andy Warhol's very first exhibit. According to Blake Gopnik's biography of Warhol, Perry Davis heavily influenced Warhol's art, and, perhaps more importantly, helped to make the CIT art department one of the few spaces in Pittsburgh where queer students and professors could feel comfortable exploring their art. Warhol wanted to be a dancer and is in the famous Modern Dance Club photo in one of his CIT yearbooks. Perry Davis was one of a group of young, gay teachers at CIT who had a significant impact on Warhol. Among several gay instructors at Tech, Perry Davis had been both the most openly queer and the most obviously and deeply invested in the latest moves and news of the wider art world. Most weekends, he invited his students to gatherings in his home, where they found support for their most avant-garde, even Dada ideas.