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 Clu...